Consider "communication lost to fleet" #3
Description
If part of the goal is to introduce folks to the ideas of interacting with web services, then an important part of that is dealing with failure. Lots of failure.
One way to drive that point would be to introduce a small percentage chance of a non-200 class error occurring -- a "communication lost to fleet" that would necessitate the introduction of retry mechanisms.
From a gameplay standpoint, this would introduce tension when trying to retreat from battle, for example :)