Battleship Ship Placement Strategy
Placement is the only decision you make before the shooting starts, and a good layout can cost your opponent ten or more extra shots. The goal is not an unbeatable formation, which does not exist, but a layout that is hard to guess.
Spread the fleet across the board
Do not cluster all five ships in one corner. Cover different quadrants so that finding one ship does not lead straight to a neighbour. A hit that reveals only a single ship is worth much less to your opponent than a hit that reveals a cluster.
Mix horizontal and vertical ships
If every ship points the same way, an opponent who finds the axis can sweep the whole fleet quickly. Alternate orientations and avoid putting all the long ships along the same edge.
Do not be predictable
Human players like the edges and corners, and a probability-based AI searches the centre first because more ship positions cover it. Mix both: put some ships against an edge and others in the open, and do not reuse the same layout every game. The Re-deploy fleet button gives you a fresh random fleet in one tap.
Protect the small ships
The two-cell Destroyer is the hardest ship to find but the easiest to waste. Tuck it between longer ships or away from obvious checkerboard lines so that a parity scan passes it by. Ships are allowed to touch, so a tight cluster is legal; just remember that a cluster also gives away more with each hit.
No perfect layout
Every formation can be found by luck, so aim for uncertainty rather than hiding. Random placement is a strong baseline because it is unpredictable; adjust it by hand only to remove clear weaknesses such as all five ships on one side.