Sovereign Storm ships five match modes. They share one combat engine — the simultaneous plan/submit/resolve/replay loop from Game Design — and differ only in win condition, team layout, and what populates the board. Modes plug into a strategy registry on the server, so each is a self-contained set of rules over the same core.
See also: Game Design · The Odyssey · Architecture.
The five modes
| Mode | Shape | One-liner |
|---|---|---|
| Blockade | Two teams, PvP | Race to capture flag tiles; sink or control. |
| Voyage | Co-op | Sail through procedural waves of enemies and bank cargo at beacons. |
| Hunt | Co-op boss | The Leviathan rises — all hands on one team to bring it down. |
| Free-for-All | Battle royale | Every captain for themselves; last afloat or most points. |
| The Odyssey | Co-op expedition | Greek-myth sea monsters; push through depth, harvest wreckage, survive. |
Recommended player counts run from solo-with-bots up to eight captains, with the practical sweet spot varying by mode. Bots fill any empty seats so every mode is playable solo.
Blockade
The default competitive mode. Two teams (green and blue) contest flag tiles on the map; scoring comes from capturing and holding those flags while sinking the opposition. Friendly fire defaults to On. This is the purest expression of the simultaneous-turn duel — read the enemy’s likely path, deny the flag, and punish overextension.
Voyage
A single-team co-op expedition. The map seeds enemy ships, and successive waves enter from rotating map edges (a telegraphed amber glow warns which edge a wave will arrive on). Captains fight off the raiders, return to a safe-zone band to rearm and repair, and bank cargo. Over a long match the enemy vessels ramp from sloops toward frigates. Captains have a limited number of respawns; when the whole team is permanently sunk, the run ends in a wipe.
Hunt
A co-op boss fight. A single boss vessel (the Leviathan) spawns at the center of the map with a large HP pool, the longest cannon reach, and the ability to fire both sides every round without an ammo budget. Every few rounds it uses an ability — an area-of-effect slam, a submerge, or a whirlpool spawn. The team wins by concentrating fire to sink it before a round limit expires.
Free-for-All
A battle royale with no teams. Every captain is opposition; friendly fire cannot be disabled because there are no friendlies. A leaderboard replaces the team score split. The default win condition is most points after a round limit, with last-ship-standing as the alternative. FFA arenas can include dedicated cargo turn-in tiles so captains can bank loot without sailing all the way to a safe band.
The Odyssey
A themed PvE expedition mode — the newest and most ambitious. It reuses the co-op shape of Voyage but layers depth-stratified sectors, Greek-myth sea monsters, and a wreckage-and-loot harvest loop on top, with a planned persistent looter-shooter meta-game beyond the in-match MVP. It has its own page: The Odyssey.
How modes are wired
Each mode implements a common strategy interface covering things like allowed teams, the win-condition check, match-ready threshold, and per-mode setting defaults (including friendly fire). The single authoritative game room dispatches into the active mode’s strategy at the relevant points in resolution. Adding or tuning a mode means editing data and one strategy entry, not the core resolver — see Architecture for how that boundary is drawn.