Battleships Game Description

Battleships is a popular guessing game played between two players.

It is a classic game of strategy and luck, requiring players to balance guessing and deduction to outmanoeuvre their opponent.

Objective

Each player has a fleet of ships placed on a grid, and the objective is to sink all of the opponent's ships by guessing their locations.

Gameplay

1. Setup: Each player places their ships on a grid, which consists of 10x10 squares, without showing their opponent.
2. Ships: The fleet consists of several ships of different sizes and which score different points:
   • aircraft-carrier: 5 squares, 7 points
   • battleship: 4 squares, 6 points
   • cruiser: 3 squares, 5 points
   • submarine: 3 squares, 5 points
   • destroyer: 2 squares, 4 points
3. Guessing: Players take turns firing virtual missiles at coordinates (e.g., A5, G7) to attack their opponent's grid.
4. Hit or Miss: The opponent's grid shows where the missile hit and the effect it had.
5. Hit and Go again: A successful hit is rewarded by having another go, and keep going until you miss.
6. Sinking a Ship: If a player hits all the squares occupied by a ship, it's considered sunk.
7. Winning: The game ends when one player has sunk all of their opponent's ships. That player is the winner.

How to play

My Games

Go to page My Games to view available games which you have created or where you have been invited to play by an opponent.

Click on the Add Game link to create a new game.

Give the game a name, so that it can be identified among all the others. If it is not unique the name will be appended with a numeric sequence.

Edit the grid by selecting a vessel and plotting it on the grid where appropriate.

To distribute the vessels randomly on the grid use the Go Random button. You can click Go Random multiple times. Click Save Random, when a distribution you like is achieved. Click Cancel Random to return to any vessels you had previously plotted.

Click Start Again to clear the grid of all vessel locations.

To invite your opponent click on the Player 2 link and sent it to them. They will need to login or register and plot their fleet vessels before the game can be played. The game will switch to a status of Waiting until player 2 has completed their vessel locations.

When both the game owner and opponent have completed editing their grid the game is Ready to play.

Click Engage to play the game.

The winner is the player who first destroys all the opponent's fleet vessels.

Play Against the Machine

When you have plotted your vessels and the game is in a status of Waiting you can opt to play the Single Player Game.

Simply click the Single Player Game button.

You will be presented with the My Games page where you can click Engage to continue. You will notice that your opponent is the System Admin player.

Game Status

Each game goes through a number of statuses (stati?) depending on the actions of the players.

1. New: The initial status of a game.
2. Edit: When each player is in the process of editing the game. Click Edit grid to plot vessels.
3. Waiting: When one of the players has plotted all their vessels; waiting for the opponent to plot theirs.
4. Ready: When both players have plotted all their vessels. Each player clicks Engage to start playing.
5. Engaged: When the game is being played.
6. Completed: When the game has been won by one of the players. Click Replay to see a simulation of the game. Click Delete to remove the game from the list (a soft delete).
7. Replaying: When the game is being replayed.

Battle Progress

When engaged in a battle the Battle Progress table shows each player the status of the opponent's fleet.

A hit is registered against the opponent's vessel showing that the vessel has been hit, in red, and which part of the vessel, if appropriate, also shown in red.

Once all the parts of a vessel have been hit the status changes to destroyed for all the parts and the vessel overall and the colour changes to black.

What just happened?

As mentioned above, when the game is over, it is set to Completed and the Replay link can be used to see a simulation of how the game progressed. Use this option to improve your strategy when playing next time. You will have noticed that vessels can only be plotted vertically or horizontally. You should bear this in mind while deciding on your next move. When replaying the game you get to see the full distribution of your opponent's vessels, and can perhaps see opportunities you missed during the game.

The destruction of vessels and the points scored are accumulated in your profile.

Go to the Leaderboard page to see how your performances compare with others.

Have fun!