Placing ships and submitting actions

Hi after reading the rules i am unclear about a few things

  1. I’ve noticed that the format for the arguments to pass when placing a ship looks something like shipName x y direction . My question is why do we need to specify the direction and why is it necessary?

  2. I’ve noticed that the only actions you can write in phase 2 are do nothing and fire shot. Does this mean that once you’ve placed your ships on the map you can’t move them around?

    • If this is true how do you protect your ships against attacks? I understand that a ship’s position is given away once it is hit!
  3. Since there are different types of ships, i think 4 or 5 different kinds. Does this mean that in future each ship will have its own different features or special abilities?

  4. How many hits does it take to destroy a ship?

I think the rules assume that you’ve played Battleships as a child - I imagine they would be quite confusing to someone with no idea of how the game works. It’s a very simple game: you can play it just by drawing a grid on paper.

I’m just a fellow competitor, but here are my answers:

  1. The ships take up multiple blocks. So a submarine (length 3) at (1, 1) facing East would occupy (1, 1), (2, 1) and (3, 1).

  2. You can’t move them around - this is how the game works. You can’t protect them - the only way to stop your opponent shooting your ships is to end the game by sinking all of theirs!

  3. Here’s where we diverge from the childhood game. Only the Entelect guys can tell you for sure, but I assume so.

  4. Unless they change the rules for later rounds: once the ship has been hit once on each of its blocks, it’s sunk.

Thanks Malman i guess you’ve answered most of my questions! For those who wanna read up more on this game i recommend https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_(game)

Hi Paradox, what malman has said is correct, there will be interesting changes coming in the future, so keep tuned and keep in mind that your bot will have to evolve, so to say, but for now we have kept to the basics of battleships, hope that everything is clear.