Full guide: fleet placement, shots by coordinates, hits and sinking, controls on muta.pro and ship-hunting tactics. Read it — and into battle.
Battleship is a blind duel of two fleets on 10×10 boards. Your task is to be the first to sink all the opponent's ships, guessing the coordinates of their cells while the opponent tries to do the same to your fleet. Each player sees only their own board and the results of their own shots: miss, hit or sunk.
The winner is whoever destroys the entire enemy squadron first. Both luck and logic matter here: from a single hit you work out how the ship lies and finish it off.
Each player has a board 10×10 and a fleet of ten ships: one four-deck, two three-deck, three two-deck and four single boats. Ships are placed vertically or horizontally and must not touch even at the corners. On muta.pro the fleet is placed automatically by the rules, so you can go straight to shooting. You see your own board in full, the opponent's board is covered by fog.
On your turn you pick a cell on the opponent's board and shoot. The board is hidden, so the shot is made blind — by guess or by system.
If the cell is empty, a miss is marked and the turn passes to the opponent. After a miss, you wait for your turn.
A hit on a deck (hit) grants another shot. As long as you keep hitting, the turn stays yours — finish off the ship you found.
When all decks of a ship are hit, sunk is shown. The cells around the sunk ship are automatically marked empty — there can be no ships there.
The opponent shoots at your board by the same rules. You see where they hit and count how many of your ships are still afloat.
The opponent's board through the attacker's eyes. Red with ✕ — a hit, dark red with ☠ — a sunk ship, blue dots — misses, ◎ — where to shoot next.
The game ends as soon as one player's entire fleet is sunk. Whoever destroyed all ten of the opponent's ships first wins. No score accumulates: only the fact of destroying the squadron matters. On muta.pro the game keeps stats of salvos and hits, and after the battle you can start a rematch and fight again.
Hit every other cell in a checkerboard pattern — that way you reach the large ships faster, as they don't fit between the shots.
After a hit, check the cells horizontally and vertically from the hit: the ship is stretched in one direction.
The cells around a sunk ship are known to be empty — don't shoot there, save your turns.
Small boats often hide along the sides and in the corners — don't forget to check the perimeter.
You hide your fleet not to “look nice” but so the opponent searches longer. On muta.pro the board is 10×10, ships do not touch even at the corners — which means the enemy counts cells no worse than you. Arrange your fleet against the typical hunting algorithm: against “checkerboard” fire and finishing off along a line.
Four- and three-deckers at the edge take half the finishing directions away from the opponent: the continuation can only be sought along the side, not in all directions.
Do not bunch the ships in one sector. Finding one, the opponent sprays the surroundings and stumbles onto its neighbours. Spreading forces them to search anew.
Four single cutters take longest to catch. Hide them away from the cluster of big ships and not in a straight line — otherwise one lucky guess gives them away.
If you press “auto-placement” every time — that too is a habit. Over a long series, change where the big units sit so you cannot be read from past games.
The big ships are pressed to the sides, the fleet is split across sectors, the cutters stand apart — the whole board will have to be searched.
The attack splits into two phases: search (until a ship is found) and finishing off (until it is sunk). Do not mix them — in the search save your shots, in finishing off do not let the ship “slip off the hook”.
Fire at the black cells of an imaginary chessboard. Any ship of two decks or more occupies at least one such cell — this way you comb the board twice as fast.
After a hit, fire at the four neighbours. A second hit sets the direction: from then on shoot only along that line.
Found the axis — shoot it out in both directions until you get “sunk”. Stopping early leaves a live deck, and the ship will still bite back.
Keep in mind which ships are still afloat. If the four-decker is sunk, you no longer need to search long runs of cells — save your shots for the small fry.
Tune the search grid to the longest living ship: a wide step uncovers exactly that one faster, and you will finish off the small fry along the way.
The checkerboard search grid: shots at the “◎” cells are guaranteed to graze any ship two decks or longer.
Mastery lies in not wasting a turn on junk shots. Two techniques set the strong player apart: reading the fragments around a hit and framing a sunk ship with a mental border.
Ships do not touch at the corners. So if there is already a miss diagonal to a hit, that is no obstacle — but a live deck can only lie in a straight line. The diagonals are never checked.
After “sunk”, the entire perimeter around the ship is guaranteed empty. On muta.pro these cells are marked automatically — do not spend a single salvo on them.
Estimate whether a live ship still fits in the remaining gap. If there is only one cell between misses, a long ship won’t stand there — don’t shoot.
The sunk two-decker (✕) is framed by a provably empty perimeter (•) — you must not shoot there; aim further at the “◎”.
Battleship forgives bad luck but not sloppiness. The same misses recur from game to game — here they are, from the crude to the subtle.