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When I was a kid I had a battleship game for the original gamebody (which was also available for the nes and game gear at least). One interesting thing it had that I think kde's version of the game would benefit from are special weapons. These include weapons (which can hit more than one square simultaneously) and scanners (which can detect if ships are in a certain set of squares). Some weapons allowed you to pick which squares you hit (like a three-shot missile that let you hit any three squares on the board in a single turn), while others had a fixed shape and you could position the shape anywhere on the board (like a 2x2 square or an X-shape).

Each user was given the same, limited number of such weapons. Further, each weapon was fired form a specific ship, so if you lost that ship you lost all remaining rounds of that weapon. Allowing users to set before the game how many of each weapon they get would add a new level of fun and strategy to the game. Of course they could be turned off for purists. Here are a few examples of the sorts of shapes certain fixed-shape weapons and scanner would hit (X is a hit, _ is just a spacer):

Code: Select all

XX
XX

X_X
_X_
X_X

X__X
_XX_
X__X

X__X
X__X

X_X
___
X_X