Lighthouse Keepers Strategy: Aim Faster, Miss Less

Every shot is a measurement. The keeper who learns the most from each miss, and closes in fastest, wins the round. Here's how.

Start with a good first shot

The lights always stand between about 660 and 890 units apart, so the first shot needn't be a wild guess. On a calm day, a shot at 45° needs a power between 72 and 90 to reach the other lantern, depending on how far apart the lights stand. Start at 45° and 80, adjust for the wind (see below), and you will rarely be far out.

Look at the picture before you fire: lights close together need less power, and a target lantern standing lower than yours needs a little less than one standing higher.

Bracket the target

Change one thing at a time. Keep the angle fixed and adjust only the power, so each shot tells you something clear.

  1. If your shot falls short, add power; if it goes long, take some off.
  2. Once you have one shot short and one long, the right power is between them. Try the middle next, and keep halving the gap.
  3. Use the report under the controls: "about 60 short" is worth far more than "a bit short". At 45° and around 80 power, each point of power moves the landing spot about 20 units.

Don't over-correct. The lantern is a small target: at 45° the band of power that hits it is only about 3 points wide. When you are within 20 or 30 units, change the power by one point at a time.

Reading the wind

Wind matters more than anything else. It pushes the shot sideways the whole time it's in the air, so its effect grows with the flight time. Some rules of thumb, for a 45° shot:

  • Each point of wind against you needs about two-thirds of a point more power; each point behind you, that much less. A full wind of 10 against you means about 7 extra power.
  • Higher shots stay up longer, so the wind moves them more. At 65°, the same wind of 10 changes the power you need by about 12 points, roughly twice as much.
  • The pennant on each roof shows the wind too: the longer it streams out, the stronger the wind.

Remember the wind is the same for both keepers. A wind that carries your shots towards the other light holds theirs back, and the reverse.

High shot or low shot?

On level ground and with no wind, two angles reach the same spot: a low one and a high one that add up to 90°. 35° and 55° land in the same place, and so do 30° and 60°, at almost the same power. So which should you use?

  • Low shots (around 30° to 40°) are quicker, drift less in the wind, and are more forgiving: they cross the lantern's height at a shallow angle, so a slightly wrong power still hits. At 30° the band of power that hits is about 4 points wide, against 2 at 60°.
  • High shots (55° and above) clear tall sea stacks that a low shot would hit, but they are at the mercy of the wind and need a very exact power.

Unless something is in the way, aim low. Go high only to get over an obstacle.

Rocks in the way

A tall stack between the lights can block every low shot. You have two ways round it. Lob over it with a high shot, or blast through it: every shot that bursts on rock takes a bite out of it, and a few shots in the same place will cut a notch you can fire through. Lobbing is quicker in a light wind; blasting is steadier in a strong one.

Be careful with very high shots into a wind blowing back towards you. A shot fired nearly straight up can be carried back onto your own lantern, and that gives the round away.

Beating the computer

  • The computer gets better with every shot it fires in a round, so you are in a race. Get close quickly: a good first shot and decisive bracketing matter more than a perfect third shot.
  • The first shot of each round alternates between the keepers. When the computer starts, you have one shot less to catch up, which makes your first shot even more important.
  • Watch the computer's trail. It faces the same harbour from the other side, and where its shots fall tells you how the wind is treating shots in flight.
  • Against Hard, think of the round as two or three shots long. Start with a careful estimate rather than a probing shot.

Ready to put it into practice? Play a match, or check the rules again.