Sea Battle
Hide your fleet, then find and sink the computer's ships first.
How to play Sea Battle
Sea Battle is the classic pencil-and-paper game of hidden ships. You and the computer each hide a fleet on a 10 × 10 grid. Then you take turns firing at squares on the other grid. You cannot see the enemy ships, so every shot is a guess until you start to hit something.
Goal
Sink all five enemy ships before the computer sinks all of yours.
The fleet
- Carrier — 5 squares
- Battleship — 4 squares
- Cruiser — 3 squares
- Submarine — 3 squares
- Destroyer — 2 squares
Placing your ships
- Your ships start in random spots. Drag a ship to move it. Tap it to turn it between across and down.
- Press Random for a new layout, or Rotate to turn the selected ship.
- Ships must stay inside the grid and cannot overlap. With the default rule, ships may not touch each other, not even at a corner. You can allow touching ships in the menu above the board.
- Press Start battle when you are happy with your fleet.
Turn by turn
- Tap a square on the enemy grid to fire one shot.
- A white splash means a miss. Fire means a hit.
- When every square of a ship has been hit, that ship is sunk. The game tells you which ship it was and shows it on the grid.
- Then the computer fires one shot at your fleet. On a phone, the view switches to your grid so you can see it land.
When ships may not touch, the water around a sunk ship is marked with small dots, since no ship can be there.
End of the game
The first side to sink the whole enemy fleet wins. If you lose, the ships you did not find are shown on the enemy grid.
Strategy tips
- Search on a checkerboard. The smallest ship is 2 squares long, so shooting every other square is enough to touch every ship. This saves a lot of shots.
- Start in the middle. Long ships cross the centre of the grid more often than the edges, so central squares are a better first guess.
- After a hit, try the four squares around it. Once you have two hits in a line, keep shooting along that line until the ship sinks.
- Count what is left. If only the Carrier is afloat, a gap of four squares cannot hide it. Skip spaces that are too small for the ships still at sea.
- Hide ships in odd places. The computer on Hard looks for the most likely spots. Placing ships along an edge or close together (when allowed) can make them harder to find.
Sea Battle FAQ
Is this the same as Battleship?
It is the same classic game of hidden ships, which is also sold under brand names such as Battleship. The fleet of five ships (5, 4, 3, 3 and 2 squares) and the 10 × 10 grid follow the common rules.
Do I get another shot after a hit?
No. Here each side fires one shot per turn, hit or miss, as in the classic paper game.
Can ships touch each other?
By default they cannot, not even at the corners. Choose "Ships may touch" in the menu above the board if you want to place them side by side.
How strong is the computer?
Easy mostly fires at random. Medium searches on a checkerboard and follows up every hit. Hard works out where the remaining ships are most likely to be and usually needs around 40 shots to sink your fleet.
