The Basics of Battleships Weapons

Note: This weapon guide is written for the beginner player; advanced players may find this simply a review.

In Battleships Pro, the weapon system works differently than in most other WarCraft III maps. Instead of having a single attack, each ship can carry several weapons that fire from their ships automatically at given intervals, or cooldowns, if any nearby enemy is within range.

Each ship starts out with the Basic Cannon. Let's see how it works:
















The Basic Cannon is not too strong, but has a decent range and damage. Since the starting ship, the Sailor, has 200 base hp, one Basic Cannon will take 10 hits, or 15 seconds to destroy a non-upgraded Sailor.

However, not every "attack" from the weapon will hit the enemy. In fact, you cannot aim weapons, at least not directly. Yet strong players tend to hit their enemies far more times than newbies will.

This weapon ability actually selects a target enemy ship or structure within 700 range every 1.5 seconds to attack. It may seem random at first, but given a constant number of valid targets, each cannon will begin to fire at the ships in the same order, and cause the same amount of average damage to each one.

Therefore, to increase your damage output on a particular target, maneuver your ship so that it is just within range to hit the target, but out of range of as many other ships as possible.

Conversely, to take the reduce damage taken, position yourself in a cluster of allied ships, or if only a few allied ships remain, move to the other side of the allied ships, so that they stand between you and your attacker.

To hit you, the attacker would have to run towards your allied ships, and spread his damage over several targets. On the other hand, you will have clear fire on your once attacker, because there will be no ships near him after he has run out of his cover.

Now let us take a look at another example: the Bombard Cannon.
















First off, we notice that the Bombard Cannon has a significantly higher cost: 2100 gold, which is 10.5 times that of a Basic Cannon. But does this mean that it is 10.5 times more powerful?

Yes and no.

First, the Bombard Cannon is considered a long-range weapon. At 1600 range, it is able to hit enemy ships without them being able to return fire. That is, unless they also have a long range weapon and have vision of you. This brings us to an important fundamental of Battleships:

A ship's weapons can only hit units that it can see.

Thus it may be possible to remain out of fire by

1. Sailing into a "blind spot" where natural obstacles or terrain obstruct the opponent's sight.
2. Using Invisibility. The Crusader, Trader, and Merchant all have invisibility abilities, and the Smoke Screen and Integrated Smoke Machine items can allow any ship to become invisible. Some ships and items can see invisible units though.
3. Using Barrier. Only the Trader and Merchant have this capability.

Now let us examine the damage aspect of the Bombard. It deals 40 damage every 1.25 seconds, or 32 damage per second (dps). Compared to the Basic Cannon's 13.33 damage per second, the Bombard seems like a waste of money, as it costs 10.5 times as much yet deals only 2.4 times the damage.

However, the long range along with the inventory factor make up for this. The inventory plays a crucial role in Battleships strategy, since a player can carry up to 6 items.

After buying a few miscellaneous ones like a sail, hull, teleporter, etc. weapon space can quickly become limited. So even if 3 Basic Cannons deal more dps and cost a fraction of a Bombard, the Bombard can allow the player to have more inventory space and be safer as they deal damage from further range.

Finally, we note that the Bombard Cannon says that it targets "Ships Only" as opposed to "Ships and Structures" on the Basic Cannon. This simply means that a Bombard will hit only ships and not towers. It can be a good thing if you are going for player kills, since the towers won't draw your fire.

Now let us look a look at the opposite end of the spectrum, a short range weapon: the Machinegun Cannon.
















If you calculate the stats on this one, the Machinegun costs 6.5 times that of a Basic Cannon, deals 5 times the damage, and has shorter range. Now we see the inventory factor in real effect. Buying 6 Basic Cannons costs less, deals more damage, and has more range than just 1 Machinegun, but the ship with the Machinegun has 5 more inventory slots, with much more freedom.

However, it is easy to see that the ratio of the dps to cost is far higher on the Machinegun than on the Bombard. Short range weapons tend to have higher damage output, while long range weapons tend to have lower ones.

Also, to summarize the inventory factor: Expensive weapons tend to have lower dps to gold ratios than those of cheaper ones, but are more efficient in inventory space.

Well, I hope this guide helps those of you who may be new to Battleships, or are confused with the weapon system. Have fun sailing the high seas!