If you're in close enough range, squares holding a ship will be highlighted, get closer still and the ships themselves will appear. That's no guarantee you'll hit them though, because even if you target the right square, your shot may still miss. If you're starting to get the idea that an awful lot is going on here for a real time game, wait some more, because we still haven't scratched the surface. Now let' s add to this fast-filling pot full motion video. Huge, heaping, smoking bowl-fulls of full motion video.
Battleship has tons of absolutely gorgeous full motion video cut scenes.
The larger video scene, which depicts what is happening with your fleet, plays underneath the playing grid. And no doubt about it, it looks damn cool too. But it seems to these eyes that, like so much else in this game, NMS chose this approach to video because it looked or sounded cool without giving too much thought to the effect it had on game play. Take a look at the full image of the game screen depicted below. Consider all that's going on there.