pedestrian: I LOVE that idea - let the sea monster attack 1 square at random each turn.

One of the things I know I don't like about regular battleboats is it takes longer (many users like faster games), so having this 2nd square always getting attacked will also speed up the game. Plus like you said, for me - I usually follow a "pattern" to search for boats, and that would force me to adjusted continually during the game.

AbigailII: I would say no, that should not be allowed to happen (in my opinion) Since in the real world (yea, like this game is really based in the real world) - but in the real world you would not see boats be able to do that, so I would say not to let it happen in the game also.

Lets make it at least 3 posts this year. This site needs more Battleboat variants. Below is a list of variant ideas - some are my idea's, others are ideas from others below.

Ideas - comments - thoughts.

Tricky Battleboats (Plus & Dark) – This is where three (3) dummy items are also placed on the board to trick the other user who might hit it to think they hit a ship. (The dummy item does NOT need to be sunk to win the game.) They dummy item could be a piece of driftwood, a mine, a life raft, or something similar.

Sphere Battleboats (Plus & Dark) - Rules & everything is the same, but game is played on the sphere – like the Froglet games, where a boat can be placed off the edge onto the other side..

Bonus Battleboats – One shot each turn, if you get a hit when you “submit this move”, the game is back in your hands to make another move.

Dark Battleboats Plus – You start with 5 shots each, but you lose 1 for each of your ships that are sunk. NOT ONLY do you not see which ships you sunk, you DO NOT see your own board either (that is once you set up your own pieces) – This is to solve the problem of seeing your opponent shooting 4 shots and then knowing you sunk a ship that way.)

HexBoats – Game is played on a hex / honeycomb type of board, so instead of boats being places either up/down or left/right – they will be able to be placed in 3 different directions.

Super Battleboats / Diagonal Boats (regular,plus,dark) – use same board, same rules – only different is you are able to place your boats diagonal. (I would think this wouldn’t be too hard to program, the hardest part would probable be getting new graphics of the boats on the board going diagonal.)

Moving Battleboats Plus – A variant of the Plus game. During a turn, you can use one of your “shots” to move one of your boats 1 position in the game. (So if your piece is from left to right) – you could use one of your available shots to move your boat 1 square over to the left or right. (or use 2 available shots to move your boat 2 squares.) You can not move past the edge of the board, you can not change the up/down to left/right position of your boats…. but you CAN move to a place that has already been shot. (So you can re-shot a square that has been shot at before.) So you can try to hide your boats some, but at the same time you lose one of your shots to try to find your opponents boats.

Choice Battlebaots Plus (Choice Dark Battleboats) – You can choose what boats you will place on your own board. The choice of 10 configurations & your opponent will not know which configuration you picked. The choices:

1 5-ship, 1 4-ship, 2 3-ships, 1 2-ship (classic) (17)
2 4-ships, 2 3-ships, 1 2-ship (16)
1 5-ship, 1 4-ship, 1 3-ship, 2 2-ships (16)
2 5-ships, 2 4-ships (18)
1 4-ship, 2 3-ships, 2 2-ships (14)
2 5-ships, 2 3-ships, 1 2-ship (18)
5 3-ships (15)
1 6-ship, 1 4-ship, 1 3-ship, 2 2-ships (17)
1 6-ship, 1 5-ship, 1 4-ship, 1 2-ship (18)
3 4-ships, 1 3-ship, 1 2-ship (17)

Each choice has between 14-18 hittable spots. Some of the lower 14/15 will mean it will take less shots for your opponent to beat you, but you also mostly have more smaller harder to find boats.

Kunoichi_Power: The advantage is mostly in the Battleboat Plus version. Current stats:

Battleboats:
White: 15017 (50.55%)
Black: 14574 (49.06%)

Dark Battleboats:
White: 28740 (54.62%)
Black: 23838 (45.31%)

Battleboats Plus:
White: 50978 (60.49%)
Black: 33227 (39.42%)

Now the important question: How do you let black take one more move in Battleboat Plus when the number of shots is determined by how may ships they have left?

(NOTE: Best thing in my opinion is to do is make sure you play 2-games, switched colors when you play)

azeria: The only way is to ask your opponenet - sometimes they will tell you.

Pedro Martínez: Does he use the "random" place boat option? Just wondering if it is "broke" or something - possible giving the same "random" option for different people.

This could be the biggest Battleboat Plus tournament on this site ever!

http://brainking.com/en/Tournaments?trg=14142&tri=88832&trnst=0&trp=1

Already 88 players signed up, and will start once 128 sign up.

Single elimination. (Which means you will only get 1 game with someone at a time - so no need to worry about getting a lot of games)

Plus on top to that, there is a PRIZE with this tournament!

Open to everyone - Pawns, Knights, or Rooks or higher!

SIGN UP NOW NOW NOW

... and good luck to all.

mctrivia: Yea - but that is already available on another turn-based game site - trying to figure out a unique way to have BrainKing to have its own version.

If I were to make a multi-player (more then 2) version of Battleboats:

One big board - maybe 15x15

All players pieces goes on the SAME board

The computer randomly places ALL pieces on the 1 board. (Player can not place them since 2 players might accedently place a piece in the same space.)

The more players, the less pieces that can fit on the board - so maybe something like one "4 long", two "3 long", and two "2 long" pieces for each player.

Each player gets a chance to shot on the board - of course they will know where their own boats are on the board, but are able to shot anywhere else on the board.

Each player gets to see where the other shots - when a hit is made, you do NOT know who's boat it is until it is sunk. (So player one makes a hit, player two sees that and shots around it to get a second hit, etc...)

..... This can also be set up to be teams - 2 against 2 - where the 2 team mates get to share notes and try to sink the other players boats. If one of the player loses all their boats, they are out and the 1 player has to continue. (They can still "win" the game if their team mate continues to sink all their opponents ships when they are not even playing anymore.)

Yea, Fencer knows about the bug, but the last I heard is that the database admistrator (Liquid) was not around to "completly" fix the problem. Fencer has fixed it for now, but he does not guarentee that it will not be back until Liquid is able to take a look at it.

ColonelCrockett: I'm not sure, but I have a beter discussion topic.

Can anyone think of some interesting variants of the game that would be good on this site?

Here are some I posted about awhile back:

# Bonus Battleboats - One shot each turn, if you get a hit when you hit "submit this move", the game is back in your hands to make another move.

# Outline Battleboats - A sort of "anti-battleboats" - goal is to outline the boats without hitting them. 5 hits and you lose. My question: What is an outline - just the 2 sides, and above - or the 4 corners also? And if it's near a side, you just need do the 3 sides?

# HexBoats - Game is played on a hex/honeycomb type of board - So instead of a boat being about to be placed either up&down, or left&right - it will be able to be place 3 different ways.... making the game a little more interesting

# Dark battleboats Plus - You start with 5 shots each, but you lose 1 for each of your ships that are sunk. Not only do you not see which ships you sunk, you DO NOT see your own board either! (This is to solve the problem of seeing your opponent shooting 4 shots and hence knowing you sunk a ship that way)

Kevins - I believe hrqls's comment was about my Dark BB+ variant I was describing a few post before, not the current version.

Brian1971 - The only thing Fencer does not want an autopass for is Backgammon, and I don't think that is a reason why he does not want your version of the game (or to even say that he does or does not want your version of the game)

I have posted many versions of games, from battleboat variants to backgammon variants. Many others have also posted game idea, and many many variant ideas, so it would be impossible for Fencer to implement them all.

Also Fencer once said he would prefer to work on new games then work on variants of current games, but that's not saying he won't introduce new variants.

But lets start taking a vote from everyone, Fencer does look at these boards and if he see's enough interest in new game ideas, he may work on them.

Bonus Battleboats - One shot each turn, if you get a hit when you hit "submit this move", the game is back in your hands to make another move.

Outline Battleboats - A sort of "anti-battleboats" - goal is to outline the boats without hitting them. 5 hits and you lose. My question: What is an outline - just the 2 sides, and above - or the 4 corners also? And if it's near a side, you just need do the 3 sides?

HexBoats - Game is played on a hex/honeycomb type of board - So instead of a boat being about to be placed either up&down, or left&right - it will be able to be place 3 different ways.... making the game a little more interesting

Dark battleboats Plus - You start with 5 shots each, but you lose 1 for each of your ships that are sunk. Not only do you not see which ships you sunk, you DO NOT see your own board either! (This is to solve the problem of seeing your opponent shooting 4 shots and hence knowing you sunk a ship that way)

Feel free to vote for any of those - those last 2 are ideas I have had for versions of the game also. Plus other ideas or comments about these versions will be welcomed also.

Is looking at your oppenets past Battleboat games cheating?

My short opinion: no

My longer opinion: I think of it like football coachs looking at the other teams past games. Things you can learn from looking at your oppenets past games:

1) How they setup the board - After looking at a few games, you can usually tell if the person likes to place boats around the edge, maybe 4 pieces near one side with the 5th on the opposent side. Maybe they have a habit of putting all the pieces next to each other, or maybe never have any pieces touching - all good tips to help play against the person.

2) How they look for ships. If their first shot is always A1, and the B2, and then C3, etc... well then you know exactly where you can put boats so your oppenet will take a long time to hit any of your ships.

So my suggestions:

1) Use Random setup. It's cool that BrainKing now has this, so use Random - and if you want then change 1 or 2 of the boats.

2) NEVER use saved boards. OK, you can possible use some saved boards, but be warned not to use the same board very often.

3) Never look for your opponenets boats the same way. If you always use the same searching pattern, they can easly place their boats off of your pattern.

Personally I have not used the option to look at opponenets games for a couple of years now - when i was back on IYT and had more time, but if I had more time - I personally believe it is just a way to improve yourself to study up on your opponenets past games.

What do others think?

I've recently won a prize tournament, but I really don't need the prize - so why not create my own tournament to give away the prize!

Tournament: Battleboat Plus

Prize: 6 month knight membership (Fencer already has waiting for winner)

Format: 2 games per player since white does have an advantage

Time: 4 days per move

Start Time: September 15, 2004

Where to signup: SIGN UP HERE!

Other rules: No cheating, and have fun!

Well I have just went through 3 games where I sunk a ship before hitting submit, and have not seen the same bug. I will still watch my games closly to see if I can see this.

IMCK - You may want to post it to the Bug Tracker - Since I know Fencer gets a message everything there is something new in there, and I don't think he reads all this message boards daily.

I will start paying attention to my games to see if I can see the same thing. Did it happen for you with Battleboats or Battleboats Plus?

I have not tried, but you could just hit "previous page" in the browser?

But that is a work around - I agree that an option like that would be good, and probable not too hard to make?

Cool - have to go try that out!

bill107 - I took a look, and so far you have only sunk 1 boat.

For the "Fast Start" tournament, I will try to keep them going today as fast as I can.

BUT unlike with BK1.0, I CAN NOT start a tournament right away. There is a script that runs every hour to see if any tournament has passed the time limit and will start it automaticly.

What I will do (and have done for those tournaments), is go back in and set the date as "already expired", and once the script runs again (Withing 1 hour) the tournaments will be started!

But I'm sure I'll be going through a few of them today, so keep checking them out and sign up for all that you like. (Plus I also have the BIG TOURNAMENT which has all 3 new games, and I'm sure will get many people to sign up!

Yup, They went through - and I accepted them. Still open for more from others if you are interested!

Battleboat Plus & Dark Battleboats - If anyone is looking for a game, since it looks like a bug is currently not letting people see all the games in the waiting room - Feel free to invite me to a game of either/both of these new games.

(If others are looking for a game - feel free to post in here that you will also accept invites!)

BK2.0 will bring us Battleboats Plus AND Dark Battleboats!

Hello everyone!

I ended up writing some Battleboat Rules and tips that were posted on this site's rules.

If you have some time, take a look at them and see if anything is missing, or if you have any other suggestions.

Feel free to post them here, or in my message box!

... good point (about possible not working with Dark and Plus)

Another Battleboat Idea: Loop Battleboat (Also can be Loop Battleboat Plus, Dark loop Battleboats, etc...)

Overview - if you can hit your opponenets ship with the correct amount of shots without missing, you don't give it time to "sink" and you capture it! You can then place it back into play as one of your own ships!

Details: Sink ship with correct # of hits = let say you make a hit, if you can finish hitting the rest of the ship without any "miss" shots - you capture it. So a 4 ship will take 4 shots from the first one that hit. (If you miss with one of them, the boat has more time to take on water and sinks - not letting you capture it.)

Place back on board: Not one can you place it back on the board, you can also place it in an area that your opponent already shot! (So instead of "hit marks" on the board, you will have a "1", "2", "3", "4", etc.... that way you you can tell when you last tried to shot in an area easier.

What is e-cards and what does it have to do with battleboats!

I have tried never been able to see what ships I have missed.

I have looked before (because after looking for 10 shots for a stinking 2 ship - I want to know where it was!) - but I still could not see even after the game.

So as far as I know, it has always been like that. :-(

Battleboats Plus will be here soon (and also Dark Battleboats).

(regular) Battleboats is a new game here, and I'm guessing they are making sure it is working correctly before they bring new versions here - so hopefully soon! :-)

Caz: You can start a game by visiting the Waiting games area and either choosing a game, or creating your own.

I can post the first message!

If you are a Knight or Rook, feel free to join the * BIG BAD * BattleBoats! Fellowship.