SALVO Rules

SALVO is a free naval strategy game for two, played in a web browser. Each captain hides five ships on a 10 × 10 ocean. Every round, both captains aim at once and both salvos land together: one shot for every ship still afloat, so each ship you lose costs you a shot. Every ship has a special it can use once a game, the water hides loot that adds or removes shots, and online battles are rated. Sink all five enemy ships to win.

New to it? Start with how to play SALVO, then the SALVO strategy guide.

Each captain has a 10 × 10 ocean, columns A to J and rows 1 to 10, so C5 is column C, row 5. Both fleets are the same five ships, 17 squares in all:

• Ships lie horizontally or vertically, never diagonally.
• They never overlap, but they may touch.
• You know your rival's ships and sizes, never where they are.

Deployment

You start with a random layout and have 60 seconds to change it: drag a ship to move it, tap or click it and press ROTATE (or R) to turn it, SHUFFLE for a new random layout, READY to lock yours in. When time runs out, the layout you have stands. Online, the battle starts once both captains are ready or the 60 seconds are up.

Your salvo is one shot for every ship you still have afloat, plus or minus loot from your last salvo.

Aiming and firing

• Both captains aim during the same 25 seconds: tap or click squares on the enemy ocean, one shot each.
• Each shot needs its own square, one you haven't fired at before.
• FIRE (or Enter or Space) sends the salvo once every shot is aimed; Escape clears your aim.
• If the clock runs out first, the shots you aimed are fired and the rest are lost. Nothing is aimed for you, and a salvo sent just as time runs out still counts.

Both salvos land together

The round resolves once both captains have fired or the 25 seconds are up; you see when your rival has fired, never where. Both salvos land at once. A ship sinks when all its squares are hit, but a ship sunk this round has already fired its shot (and its special): you lose its shot from the next salvo on.

Each shot comes back as a hit or a miss. A hit never says which ship it struck; you learn that when the ship sinks.

• Miss: open water, sometimes with loot.
• Hit: part of a ship is on that square.
• Sunk: the ship's last square was hit, and you see which ship it was and its whole position.
• Contact: your shot passed over a diving submarine. No damage, but now you know where it is, and you can fire at that square again. A radar buoy also gives you a contact.
• A number: what a recon flight or sonar sweep counted, the enemy ship squares not yet hit in its area.

On your own ocean you see every enemy shot land, which ship it hit, and any loot your rival finds there.

Each ocean hides seven pieces of loot on open water, placed at random. You find loot in your rival's ocean: any shot that misses into a loot square picks it up, heavy shell and depth charge squares included.

• Loot lies only where there is no ship, so a hit never finds any.
• Loot found by one salvo adds up and lasts one salvo: two crates make +2, a crate and a mine cancel out.
• You are told when your rival finds loot in your water.

You win when all five enemy ships are sunk. If both fleets go down in the same round, it is a draw. The clocks and the online fair-play rules:

Forfeits and resignations are rated like any other result.

Every captain starts at 1000, and every finished online battle moves both ratings, chess-style (Elo).

• Quick Match, open battles and friend challenges all count; games against the computer never do.
• A battle moves a rating by at most 32 points, and the loser drops what the winner gains: 16 between equal ratings, more for beating a stronger captain, less for a weaker one.
• A draw counts as half a win: it changes nothing between equals and lifts the lower-rated captain a little.
• The leaderboard shows the top 20 captains, and your own rank after your first online battle.

Playing the computer

The computer plays by the same rules, clocks, specials and loot, and its dive is hidden like any rival's. It aims instantly and plays like this:

• Fires at random until it hits a ship.
• Then fires at the squares next to each hit on a ship it hasn't sunk.
• Brings its heavy shell and depth charges down on a ship it has wounded.
• Dives its submarine once the submarine has been hit.
• Never uses recon or sonar.

In the game you sign in first, even for the computer; the practice round on the home page needs no sign-in.

SALVO grew out of the Salvo variant of Battleship, where you fire one shot for each of your ships still afloat instead of one shot a turn. SALVO keeps that idea and builds its own game on it. It is independent, and not affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro, which owns the Battleship trademark.