How to play Sea Battle

The goal

Place your fleet

• Your five ships are a carrier (5 squares), a cruiser (4), a destroyer (3), a submarine (3) and a patrol boat (2).
• Drag a ship to move it. Tap a ship to pick it, then tap it again (or press Turn) to turn it. With a ship picked, tap open water to send it there.
• Ships can touch but not overlap. Shuffle deals a fresh random layout. Press Start when you’re happy.

Battle

• You fire first: tap a square on the enemy grid. A white peg is a miss; a red peg and flames are a hit.
• When every square of a ship is hit, it sinks and is shown. Then the computer fires back at your grid.
• The status line says whose turn it is and what the last shot on each side did. A ring marks each side’s latest shot.

On a phone

• One grid is shown big at a time. Use the switch, or tap the mini-map, to look at the other grid.

Difficulty

• Easy: the computer mostly fires at random.
• Normal: it searches in a checkerboard pattern, then closes in around each hit and follows the line until the ship sinks.
• Hard: it works out where ships could still be and fires at the likeliest square every time.

Tips

• Every ship is at least two squares long, so firing on a checkerboard pattern finds them all with half the shots.
• After a hit, try the four squares around it; after two hits in a line, keep going along that line.
• Undo takes back your last shot and the computer’s reply. Starting a new game mid-battle counts as a loss.

Questions

Strategy guides