Battleship Online
The classic Battleship game in your browser: hide your 5 ships in the sea, fire at the enemy’s coordinates and sink the computer’s fleet before it sinks yours.
Place your fleet: drag the ships onto the sea, or tap a ship and then a square.
- Aircraft Carrier (5)
- Battleship (4)
- Cruiser (3)
- Submarine (3)
- Destroyer (2)
Drag to move · tap a placed ship to select it, then tap again (or R) to rotate.
How to play Battleship
First, place your fleet on the 10×10 grid: an aircraft carrier (5 squares), a battleship (4), a cruiser (3), a submarine (3) and a destroyer (2). Drag each ship onto the sea, or tap it and then a square. Tap a ship you already placed (or press R) to rotate it. In a hurry? Use “Random”.
In the battle, you and the computer fire one shot at a time. Tap a square of the enemy sea to fire: a blue dot is water and a red X is a hit, meaning you struck a ship. When every square of a ship has been hit, it sinks and is revealed on the board.
After hitting a ship, fire at the squares next to it to find its direction. The first to sink the whole fleet wins. On the easy level the computer fires almost at random; on medium it hunts in a checkerboard pattern and follows up on hits; on hard it calculates the probability of a ship in every square.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best strategy in Battleship?
Fire in a checkerboard pattern (skipping a square) until you find a ship, because the smallest ones take up 2 squares and always cross one of the squares of the same color. After a hit, test the 4 neighbors and follow the line until the ship sinks. The center of the board tends to hide more ships.
Can the ships touch each other?
Here they can: ships only cannot overlap. Touching ships even confuses the opponent, who may think two hits in a row are from the same ship.
How does the computer choose where to fire on hard?
For each square, it counts how many ways the ships still afloat could fit through it, taking into account the water and the hits so far. Then it fires at the square with the best chance. It is the same idea used by people who study Battleship with statistics.