BATTLESHIPS(6)

📦 version 6.5.20250531, in opensuse-leap 16.0

💅 BATTLESHIPS — the game, but make it a group chat

okay so bestie, this one's from section 6 of the manual (that's games, the fun section, not the boring syscall one 🎀) and it's literally the classic Battleships game. The page is filed under BATTLESHIPS(6) and the command itself is called bs — short, iconic, no notes 👑

✨ NAME ✨

bs — the battleships game. that's it. that's the whole name. slay 💖

🌊 SYNOPSIS 🌊

battle [ -b | -s ] [ -c ]
heads up bestie: the NAME section says bs but the synopsis line literally says battle. that's the manpage's business, not mine — I'm just reporting it fr fr 🙈

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So this program lets you play the familiar Battleships game against the computer on a 10x10 board. Ten by ten. that's a hundred squares of pure emotional damage 😭

The interface is visual and largely self-explanatory — you place your ships and pick your shots by moving the cursor around the "sea" with the rogue/hack motion keys hjklyubn. yes, the old-school vi keys. ngl that's the most gamer thing I've seen all day 🎮

⚠️ important detail that will 100% trip you up: when you're selecting a ship to place, you must type the capital letter. They're capital ships, okay?? it's thematically consistent, it's giving attention to detail 💅

Also during ship placement:

  • the r command ignores the current position and randomly places your currently selected ship 🎲
  • the R command places all remaining ships randomly — the "I'm done thinking" button, iconic
  • the ^L command (form feed, ASCII 12) forces a screen redraw. when the terminal does that weird thing, this is your girl ✨

The command-line arguments control the game modes:

  • -b — selects a "blitz" variant
  • -s — selects a "salvo" variant
  • -c — permits ships to be placed adjacently

The "blitz" variant lets a side shoot for as long as it continues to score hits. hit, shoot again, hit, shoot again. chain it. go off queen 🔥

The "salvo" game gives a player one shot per turn for each of their ships still afloat. so this one puts a premium on scoring hits early and knocking out some ships. and it makes the situation much harder where you face a superior force with only your PT-boat 😭💀 like genuinely, good luck bestie, you're gonna need it.

Normally, ships must be separated by at least one square of open water. the -c option disables this check and allows them to close-pack. cozy. snuggled. adjacent.

The algorithm the computer uses once it has found a ship to sink is provably optimal. the dispersion criterion for the random-fire algorithm may not be. so: computer is scary smart in the endgame and maybe a little feral at the start, no cap 🧚

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Originally written by Bruce Holloway in 1986. Salvo mode added by Chuck A. DeGaul (cbosgd!cad). Visual user interface, "closepack" option, code rewrite, and manual page by Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>, **August 1989`. absolute legends, all of them 🫶

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

okay there's genuinely no SEE ALSO section in this one, which is its own kind of main character energy. nothing to compare it to. it stands alone. periodt 💜

and that's the page!! 💖 this gorgeous little thing came out of the ncurses-examples package, and the version/date stamp on it is 2024-06-15 — so like, she's vintage and she's current. we love a timeless icon ✨🌸🦋

battle responsibly, bestie — and remember: capital letters for capital ships 💅🚢

📦 where this page comes from