Battleship is the classic sink-the-fleet game: each player hides their ships on a 10×10 grid and, turn by turn, fires at the enemy grid until all 5 enemy ships are sunk. This guide explains the exact rules of our online Battleship game — how to place your fleet, how shooting works, what every action is worth, and how the AI thinks at each difficulty. Free to play, no download needed.
Play it now: Battleship free vs AI
How to Place Your Fleet
Every match starts with the placement phase: your 10×10 grid starts empty and you place your 5 ships one at a time:
| Ship | Size |
|---|---|
| Carrier | 5 cells |
| Battleship | 4 cells |
| Cruiser | 3 cells |
| Submarine | 3 cells |
| Destroyer | 2 cells |
- Place: tap a cell on the grid to place the current ship. Ships are placed horizontally by default.
- Rotate: tap Rotate to switch between horizontal (H) and vertical (V) orientation.
- Auto-place: tap Auto-Place to have the game arrange your whole fleet for you.
- No touching: ships cannot touch each other, not even diagonally. If a spot would put a ship next to another, you cannot place it there.
Once all 5 ships are on the board, the battle begins. The AI places its fleet automatically under the same rule: its ships never touch either.
How to Shoot and Win
With your fleet placed, you go first: tap a cell on the enemy grid to fire. The result shows instantly:
- Miss: the cell is marked as a miss and your turn passes.
- Hit: you landed on an enemy ship and you score points. The turn then passes to the AI — hits do not grant an extra shot.
- Sunk: when a ship loses all of its cells it is marked as sunk. The cells around a sunk ship are automatically marked as misses, because no ship can sit next to another.
Win: sink all 5 enemy ships to win the match and collect the win bonus. After a win, a new placement round starts on an empty board (your old fleet is not kept). If the AI sinks your fleet first, the match is over.
Scoring Table
Every action scores points, and everything is multiplied by the difficulty you picked: easy ×1, medium ×2, hard ×3.
| Action | Base points |
|---|---|
| Hit on any ship | 50 |
| Sink the Destroyer (2) | 100 |
| Sink the Cruiser or Submarine (3) | 200 |
| Sink the Battleship (4) | 300 |
| Sink the Carrier (5) | 500 |
| Win the match (bonus) | 1,000 |
Worked examples:
- Easy (×1): a hit is worth 50; sinking the Carrier is worth 500; winning adds 1,000.
- Medium (×2): a hit is worth 100; sinking the Destroyer is worth 200; winning adds 2,000.
- Hard (×3): a hit is worth 150; sinking the Carrier is worth 1,500; winning adds 3,000.
The multiplier applies to every hit, every sunk ship, and the final bonus — so hard is not just riskier, every accurate shot is worth triple.
How the AI Thinks at Each Difficulty
You pick the difficulty before placing your fleet. It changes more than the scoring — it changes how the AI shoots:
- Easy: fires at random cells on your grid, no strategy at all.
- Medium: uses hunt-and-target. It starts with a checkerboard search pattern and, once it hits a ship, fires at adjacent cells. Chasing a line of two hits is a hard-only behavior.
- Hard: builds a probability density map from the ships it still has to sink and fires at the most likely cell to contain a ship, without giving up on hits it has already scored.
Tip: on hard, a placement mistake costs more because the AI exploits any gap you leave.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Battleship free and do I need to download anything? No — it is completely free with no downloads and no sign-up. It runs right in the browser on desktop, tablet, and mobile.
How many ships are there and what sizes? Five ships on a 10×10 grid: Carrier (5), Battleship (4), Cruiser (3), Submarine (3), and Destroyer (2).
Can ships touch each other? No. Ships cannot touch, not even diagonally: if a spot would make them touch, you cannot place the ship there. After a ship sinks, the cells around it are automatically marked as misses for the same reason.
How is the score calculated? Every hit is worth 50, sinking ships is worth 100 to 500 depending on size, and winning adds 1,000 — all multiplied by the difficulty (easy ×1, medium ×2, hard ×3).
Can I only play against the AI? This version is 1 vs the computer across three difficulties. For more free strategy games in the browser, check out our strategy games guide, or try other classics like Minesweeper or Reversi.