Online Tool Store
Battleship
Play Battleship on a grid against a computer opponent, with ship placement, hit tracking, and a hunt strategy that gets harder as you win.
🔒 This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.
Games
Battleship
Frontend preview — no upload or external service.
Game state
10x10 classic fleet, turn 18: you have sunk the destroyer and cruiser, the opponent has 12 hits on 3 of your ships.
How the Battleship works
- Place your fleet, avoiding the edges and the obvious centre — both are the first places any decent opponent searches.
- Fire in a parity pattern until you hit, then work the adjacent squares.
- Once a hit is found, establish direction with two shots before committing to a line.
The method
Because the smallest ship covers two squares, a checkerboard search pattern cannot miss any ship while firing at only half the squares.
parity search: fire only on squares where (row + column) is even
That halves the shots needed to find a fleet, which is why random firing loses badly to a systematic opening.
FAQ
Where should ships be placed?
Not touching each other and not in the centre. Edges are safer than most people assume, since players avoid them expecting a bluff, but never place two ships adjacently — one hit reveals both.
Does the parity strategy really help?
Substantially. It halves the search space with no risk of missing a two-square ship, and it is the foundation of every strong Battleship engine.
Is the computer cheating when it finds ships fast?
No. The probability-based opponent computes where remaining ships can legally fit and fires at the most likely square. It is good, not clairvoyant.
How we compare
| Feature | Online Tool Store | A physical set | An app-store download |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multiple opponent strengths | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Explains the parity strategy | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| No download or account | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Works offline once loaded | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
Battleship offers a genuinely strong probability-based opponent, and explains the parity search so beating it is a matter of strategy rather than luck.