Know the fleet
Suvi's sea is 10×10, with columns A to J and rows 1 to 10. Each side hides five ships, laid straight across or down:
| Ship | Squares |
|---|---|
| Flagship | 5 |
| Cruiser | 4 |
| Frigate | 3 |
| Corvette | 3 |
| Patrol boat | 2 |
That is 17 ship squares out of 100, so most shots miss; the skill is in missing less. Two Suvi rules shape everything below. You fire one shot per turn, hit or miss. And when a ship goes down you are told which one, so you always know exactly what is still afloat. Ships may touch, but never overlap.
Placing your fleet
- Against Hard, use the edges. Hard counts every way each remaining ship could still fit and fires where the most of them overlap. Far more of those positions pass through the middle of the sea than along the sides, so its early shots lean towards the center, and ships on an edge or in a corner tend to last longer.
- Against a person, mix it up. Plenty of players check the edges early because they know that trick. Change your layout every game and avoid neat patterns, such as every ship parallel or evenly spaced.
- Let two ships touch, now and then. Someone who has just sunk a ship often skips the squares around it, and a second ship lying alongside can hide there for a long time. Shuffle spreads ships out with gaps, so drag them together yourself.
- Hide the patrol boat well. At two squares it is the hardest ship to find and often the last one standing.
Searching: the chequerboard and beyond
Every ship is at least two squares long, so each one must cover at least one square of a chequerboard pattern. Fire only at those squares and you can't miss a ship entirely: within 50 shots, every ship has been hit at least once.
| ● | · | ● | · | ● |
| · | ● | · | ● | · |
| ● | · | ● | · | ● |
Then tighten the net as ships sink:
- Patrol boat sunk: every ship left is at least three long, so every third square along each row will do, staggered from row to row into diagonal stripes. That is about a third of the sea instead of half.
- Both threes sunk too: only the four and the five remain, so every fourth square is enough.
- Skip squares nothing can use. If no ship still afloat can fit through a square, across or down, don't fire there. An unknown square with misses on all four sides is the simplest case.
- Prefer open water. Within your pattern, choose squares with long empty stretches around them in both directions; more ship positions pass through them.
Hunting a ship down after a hit
- Fire next to the hit. Try up, down, left and right, starting with the direction that has the most open water, because a long ship needs room.
- Two hits make a line. Keep firing along it until you miss, then go back and work the other end.
- Check the sinking message. If you hit four squares in a line and the message says you sank the frigate, which is three long, one of those hits belongs to another ship lying alongside. Hunt around the spare hit before you go back to searching.
- Return to your pattern, crossing off the squares the sunk ship used.
This is roughly how the Medium computer plays: a chequerboard search, then a hunt around every hit until the ship sinks.
Read the board like the Hard computer
Hard works out every position each remaining ship could still be in and fires where the most of them overlap. While a ship is wounded, it only counts positions that explain the hits. You can do a rough version in your head:
- Look at the biggest ship still afloat and ask where it can still fit. One long, open stretch is worth more than several broken ones.
- A hit with misses to its left and right must belong to a ship running up and down, and the other way round.
- The computer lays out its own fleet the way Shuffle does, with clear water between its ships. So once you sink one of its ships, every square touching it, corners included, is empty. Skip them all.
Three things to remember
- Search on a chequerboard, and widen the spacing as the small ships sink.
- After a hit, finish the ship before searching again, and check the sinking message against your hits.
- Against the computer, the squares around a sunk ship are always water.
Put it to work: play Sea Battle against Hard and try to sink its fleet in fewer shots than it needs for yours. More head-to-head games are in two-player games.
Questions
- What is the best first shot in sea battle?
- There is no magic square, but a shot near the middle on your chequerboard pattern has more possible ship positions running through it than one near an edge. Against a person who likes hiding ships on the edges, the edges may pay better.
- Do I get another shot after a hit?
- Not on Suvi. You fire one shot per turn, hit or miss, and so does your opponent. Some house rules give an extra shot for a hit; Suvi keeps strict turn and turn about.
- Can I undo a shot?
- No. Because each fleet is hidden, Sea Battle has no Undo, even against the computer. What you can use is a hint, which shows the square the Hard computer would fire at in your place.
- Does the hint look at the enemy fleet?
- No. It reasons exactly like the Hard computer, from your hits, misses and sunk ships only. It points at the most likely square, not a sure one, so a hint can miss.
- Why does the Hard computer fire at the middle first?
- Because more ship positions pass through the middle squares than through the edges. Hard fires where the most positions overlap, and at the start of a game that is the center of the sea. Easy fires at random and Medium works through a chequerboard.
Play it now
Sea Battle is free on Suvi, on your phone or computer, no download. Also: Sea Battle vs Computer · Sea Battle With a Friend Online.