Welcome to the explainer page for my second series! This time we’ll be transitioning from a game played in some of the biggest stadiums in the world to one that is played in living rooms across the world — Milton Bradley’s Battleship!
My interest in Battleship was recently piqued when I was watching Squid Game The Challenge. They play a life-sized version of the game for big stakes — check out the video below.
The players of Squid Game are divided into teams with two contestants leading their team by picking the shot locations and the rest are passively in boats. If you’re sitting in the boat that is sunk by the other team, you’re eliminated from Squid Game and lose the opportunity to win the ~$5M prize. My ears perked up when one of the contestants, Player 018 (a card-carrying genius), claimed to know exactly how to navigate her team to victory. This struck me as nuts because, I reasoned, the game of Battleship is largely a game of randomness. There are strategies that can improve your odds but in a one-game, winner-take-all duel, certainty seems mighty bold! … but is it?
To see if Player 018 is correct, in this series I’ll explore:
Building a decent AI player using the “Hunt and Destroy” strategy
Building a real-time probability map to show your best move given the current board state
And I might even explore using the Genetic Algorithm to determine the best board starting configurations
With that prelude, we’re pulling up the anchor! See you next time!