When no hits are active (most of the game for Alexis), the advisor counts how many valid ship placements pass through each cell across all remaining ships. The cell with the highest overlap score is the statistically optimal shot.

After a hit, the algorithm immediately switches to target mode: only placements that cover all cells in the active hit cluster are counted. If two hits share an axis, it locks direction and only probes the endpoints — finishing the ship before returning to Hunt.

For each cell, count every way you can legally place each remaining ship so it passes through that cell. Sum them all — that's the cell's score. Cells where many ships can overlap in many orientations glow brightest. It's recomputed live after every shot.

Because your opponent's board is hidden, the probability method assumes random placement. In reality, most people (besides Alexis) use psychological strategies — hugging edges, clustering ships, mirroring their own board. The algorithm can't account for that without a model of human tendencies.

If your opponent is running a probability search against you, corners and edges are your best defense. Early heatmaps concentrate probability in the centre; ships placed along the board's perimeter are consistently the last to be found as the density map develops.

Do players unconsciously avoid shooting cells that overlap with their own ship positions? Is Ari's ship really in d3? These are questions no probability map can capture. It is probable that I am collecting data on your ship placement right now.