Rules of Battleship
- The first player calls out a coordinate. His opponent tells him whether he has hit or missed. If there is no enemy ship on this coordinate, he has missed and he puts a white peg it that hole on his board to track where he has already tried. If he hits a ship at that coordinate, he marks his target grid with a red peg and the opponent places a red peg into the ship and must state which ship has been hit. Play passes to the next player. Tracking your shots is important for a successful attack. Repeating coordinates wastes valuable time and may give the other player an edge.
- Each player has five ships, each covering a specific number of coordinates. A carrier covers five coordinates, a battleship four, a cruiser and submarine three each and a destroyer two. When a player has made enough correct hits to fill all the holes on a ship with red pegs, the ship is sunk and removed from the grid. Turns continue until one player has successfully located and sunk all five opponent ships and is declared the winner.
- Each player gets five shots on his opening turn. The player marks the shots on his target grid with white pegs to record which coordinates he has called. Once all five have been called, the opponent identifies which were hits and misses. The rest of the game continues the same as for basic play.
- Once the five shots in the Salvo variation have been called, the opponent simply states how many were hits but not which ones. The attacking player must keep track of original Salvo shots separately and work to discover which calls were hits. This makes the game more challenging and is recommended for more experienced players.
- Game play is the same as Basic Play. In this variation, the Computer Commander prompts the setup of the game and each player to take his turn. Predetermined patterns for the ships' placement are included in the instruction manual and entered manually into the computer by each player. Turns proceed in the same general manner as in basic play.