Battleship
StrategyHow to Play
Goal: Sink all five enemy ships before the computer sinks yours.
Setup: Your fleet (5, 4, 3, 3 and 2 cells long) auto-places, tap Shuffle until you like the layout, then Start.
Battle: Tap a cell in enemy waters to fire. Red marks hits, dots mark misses, and a fully red ship is sunk. You and the computer alternate shots; fewest shots to victory is the bragging right.
About Battleship
Battleship began as a pencil-and-paper game played by officers around the First World War, decades before Milton Bradley's famous 1967 plastic version with its pegs and hinged cases. Two hidden fleets, alternating salvos, and the slow detective work of turning misses and hits into a map of your opponent's ocean: it is deduction wearing a naval uniform, and it translates perfectly to a browser grid.
The strategy is deeper than the toy-box reputation suggests. Efficient hunting uses parity, ships occupy at least two cells, so a checkerboard search pattern finds every fleet while firing at only half the ocean. Once you score a hit, the game flips from search to destroy: probing the four neighbors, finding the ship's axis, and finishing it efficiently. Our computer opponent plays exactly this way, so lazy fleet placement gets punished.
Battleship tactics that win duels
- Hunt on a checkerboard: every ship is at least two cells long, so half the grid, in a diagonal pattern, is all you ever need to search.
- After a hit, establish the axis: test one neighbor, and the moment you get a second hit, ride that line until the ship sinks.
- Remember the fleet list: if the 2-ship is sunk, single-gap spaces stop mattering, and your search pattern can widen.
- When shuffling your own fleet, prefer layouts that avoid symmetry and edges-only clumps, touching ships confuse enemy follow-up fire but risk chain discoveries.
- Count remaining shot density: late game, the largest unsearched regions are where surviving big ships must live.
FAQ
What ships are in the fleet?
The classic five: a carrier (5 cells), battleship (4), two cruisers (3 and 3) and a destroyer (2), seventeen cells of fleet hidden in a hundred-cell ocean, on both sides.
What is the checkerboard hunting strategy?
Since every ship spans at least two cells, firing only at cells of one checkerboard color still touches every possible ship, halving your search space. It is the single biggest efficiency upgrade in the game.
How smart is the computer opponent?
It hunts with parity like a good human, and after any hit it switches to target mode: probing neighbors, finding your ship's direction and finishing it. Clustered fleets can cost you two ships to one discovery.
Can I place my ships manually?
This version uses shuffle-to-taste placement: tap Shuffle until the random layout suits your strategy, then start. It keeps setup fast on phones while still giving you veto power over every layout.
