Battleship: Is it tactical?

[Togath]

So my little sister has gotten fond of asking me to play battleship with her lately, and I began to wonder, is it truly random, or is there enough depth for actual tactics?
My gut instinct says yes, since you can search in different patterns, and try to place your ships in different locations, but I'm curious what people here think.

[Rakaydos]

A search grid is a search grid, the question is whether you have a tight enough pattern to catch the destroyer, or lose enough to sweep the board for the battleship.

[Aeson]

is it truly random
Battleship is not truly random; all else being equal, the player who employs the better search pattern will, on average, win more frequently. All else being equal, the player who pays attention to what they've already sunk and better adjusts their search pattern in accordance with that information will also win more frequently (e.g. if you've been going with a search pattern that hits every other cell in a row and know that you've sunk the 2-hit target, you can modify the search pattern to hit every third cell in a row and still be guaranteed to find all remaining targets and will find the remaining targets on average more quickly than you would have had you stuck with the search pattern that hits every other cell in each row). There is nevertheless a very large element of luck in Battleship; losing your 2-hit boat or other small vessels early can really swing the game, and there really isn't much you can do about it within the game.

That being said, 'tactics' in Battleship are at least as much about playing your opponent as about placing the units on the grid and choosing a good search pattern.

[Rodin]

The playing your opponent thing was the first thing I thought of when it comes to Battleship tactics. There's human nature to take into account - most people won't keep their ships too close together in order to prevent a lucky shot. Most people won't do weird things like put all of their ships on the edges. Etc.

It's like how there's a strategy for Rock-Paper-Scissors - in theory, that game is purely random. In practice, there is a way that your average player will tend to play it, and then a different set of rules for experts who know the tricks for beating the average player. Knowing your opponent is just as important as optimizing your search grid.

I would be interested to see the math on that one though. Which is successful fastest - sequentially going through a specific search grid, or making educated guesses based on how you know your opponent plays?

[KillianHawkeye]

I would be interested to see the math on that one though. Which is successful fastest - sequentially going through a specific search grid, or making educated guesses based on how you know your opponent plays?

This isn't going to be testable, because "how well you know your opponent" isn't really quantifiable and isn't going to be something that you can ever generalize.

[Gandariel]

Especially since if you always follow the same pattern (ie start from A1, scroll through hitting every other cell), your opponent could just park everything on the opposing corner and eat popcorn for a while

[factotum]

I wouldn't say it's *very* tactical, no. Having some sort of search pattern (e.g. searching every other square) is more likely to win long-term than being entirely random, certainly, but I don't think the difference will be major--it's not like you could come up with a tactic that will win you the game 90% of the time, which I think you'd be able to do if there were more tactics involved.

[Fri]

You could try this on your next game.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5910188/an-algorithm-to-help-you-play-the-perfect-game-of-battleship