Sea Battle: Play online for free, no download required
Sea Battle, often known as Battleship, is a head-to-head guessing and deduction game. Smart shot selection, probability, and pattern searching matter more than luck. It shares the deduction thrill of Minesweeper.
Mission
Goal: Sink the entire enemy fleet before they sink yours by correctly hitting every part of each hidden ship.
Fleet
- Grid: A 10×10 ocean, usually labeled A–J and 1–10 for coordinates.
- Ships: Carrier – length 5, Battleship – length 4, Cruiser – length 3, Submarine – length 3, Destroyer – length 2.
Combat
- Fire: Choose a cell and shoot at that coordinate.
- Hit: An orange explosion or similar effect shows you struck a ship segment. Repeated hits along its length will sink it.
- Miss: A blue splash or marker indicates your shot landed in empty water.
Admiral's Guide
- Checkerboard SearchImagine the board as alternating light and dark squares like a chessboard. By firing only on one color, you ensure contact with any ship that occupies at least two consecutive cells, while checking about half the grid.
- Hunt & TargetFire in a broad pattern (often checkerboard) to find the first hit on any ship. Once you score a hit, focus shots on adjacent cells in straight lines to determine the ship’s direction and sink it efficiently.
- Don't TouchIn this version, ships cannot overlap or touch each other either orthogonally or diagonally. After sinking a ship, all surrounding cells are guaranteed to be water and can be skipped.
Origins
Sea Battle comes from early 20th-century pencil-and-paper naval guessing games, likely played by soldiers before and during World War I. A commercial pad-and-pencil version called Salvo appeared in 1931, and the well-known plastic pegboard edition, Battleship, was released by Milton Bradley in 1967, making it a family favorite.
Skills
Probability
Good players always estimate where ships can still fit on the grid, focusing on areas that can hold the largest remaining ships.
Logic
Each hit gives clues about a ship's orientation, while misses eliminate whole lanes of possibilities, turning the game into a changing deduction puzzle.
Sea Battle FAQ
Do ships touch?
In our version, ships have a 1-cell buffer zone around them.
Does the AI cheat?
No, the AI uses a probability density algorithm to guess your ship locations fairly.
Want to report a bug, ask for a new feature or contact us? [email protected]
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