I actually like playing the game with my daughter. Mostly on paper, though we’ve also played it on a smartphone. And there is some strategy to keep in mind. Ie. if you get a hit then you obviously go for the spaces around- something that my daughter quickly figured out and the fact that she could win half the time, made it a good game to play. Thinking about strategy, one can try dividing it into quadrants and try to selectively cover as much area and slowly filling that in - can be outsmarted by placing ones ships in the corner or all around the sides. I think a more interesting game would be if the ships move (hard to do on paper of course) but easy with a software version. I’d rather try to play something like the old wooden ships and iron men wargame in which wind conditions factored in and could randomly change) and you tried to get into a rake position where you could fire at the ends of the enemy ships where they had little chance of defence. But I’m curious to see you show how random choice could be improved upon.
