Post #3386563

2026-06-15 19:39 UTC

That has zero strategic advantage. it only hurts your odds of winning. *Edit: Since this has gotten a fair amount of debate, let me end it for the couple of youl who think I’m incorrect. When played normally, the odds of finding the 5 spot ship are much higher than finding the 2 spot ship (duh). You have essentially made a single 5 spot ship by stacking. When your opponent lands a hit, they are required to state what ship was struck. This means that once there’s a hit made on those ships, you have to name off ALL the ships under the peg. You transformed a game where you had to find a 5 peg ship, 4 peg, 3 peg, and a 2 peg ship into a game where all you have to do is find the easiest ship to locate (5 peg) and you win the game. This is a no brainer. Also, just for the record, it is against the rules to stack ships.

Replies (2)

@iusemybrain@sh.itjust.works 2026-06-15 20:53

hold on there, it actually does have strategic advantage from a statistical perspective. the basic notion is that for a probability of event A to occur it is proportional to the area of the event; so if larger area, larger probability, smaller area, smaller probability. if we take that idea and apply the same basis to battleship you could say the probability as the sum of each probability of each point which is 0℅ if we span the area to infinity. practically speaking, this is not true as you can’t span to an infinite scale, but you could say that the probability of hitting a point is 1℅ since battleship is a 10 x 10 grid so the probability is just 1/(10 * 10) = 0.01. Then the probability gets more complicated since you are being asked what is the probability of the second, third, fourth, etc… point being hit given that initial probability. the probability grows dependent on the first point being hit. I’m sure there is a way to find algorithmically an optimal method to finding in what location are the best positions in battleship, but generally speaking, no, there are worse conditions that have a higher probability of being guessed

Open ##3386562
@restingOface@quokk.au 2026-06-15 22:17

The grid is 10x10, so 100 spaces. Placed legally, your five ships take up 17 spaces. That means if your opponent picks a space at random, there is a 17% chance they will get a hit. It you cheat like this, your five ships only take up 5 spaces. That means if your opponent picks a space at random, there is a 5% chance they will get a hit. So, purely based on chance, this increases the odds of your opponent not beating you. You just have to make sure to also be on the offensive and sink all their battleships quickly, because if they happen to hit your battlestack just once, that means they are going to sink it all within the next 4-7 turns.

Open ##3390295