How the sub war SHOULD pan out......

[Guest Mike]

I'm keen on seazones because of a WW1 game that's just come out - I'll just mention it in passing - Guns of August, availabl through Matrix...

In it there are a limited number of sea zones, s it's only WW1 - Nth Atlantic, Nth Sea, Baltic, East & West Med, and Black Sea.

Each "ship" represents a squadron or flotilla, & is based at a particular port - you can rebase as a mission type.

Turns are of 2 months duration each.

You send each ship to a sea zone with a mission - missions include rebase, patrol, raider (for surface), anti-shipping (for subs), ASW (destroyers only), amphibious (transports) and shipping (transports)

your ship travels to that sea zone, and are subject to interception by patrols or ASW in any sea zone they have to travel through to get there - eg U-boats based in Germany can be sent to the Med - but have to travel through the Nth Sea and Nth Atlantic so might get attacked in those if there's any destroyers on ASW.

your ship gets to attack appropriate target types only in the zone it is sent to - not while it is transiting, although it does defend itself of course.

Chances of actual combat are fairly small - but if the HSF does encounter the Grand Fleet then it can take a few "screens" of combat results to sort out!! :0

shipping has 2 functions - transporting raw materials to factories from, "off map", and moving and supplying troops.

For example the Brits are advised to have 7 transports on shipping in the Atlantic, and 2 in the Med - these will bring in 9 raw materials for the factories, which will turn into production points at whatever efficiency the factories are producing at that time.

the French are supposed to have 2 in hte Ned and 3 in the Atlantic, Germany 2 in the Atlantic and 2 in the Baltic - so the Brits can shut off their Atlantic source quite easily if they want to = the blockade - for Germany their Atlantic ones also bring in food, which is in short supply - shortages of food will lower factory efficiency.....

Any ships can be allocated to any sea zone, except you can't get past Denmark or Istanbul unless you own them or you're Germany and have the Kiel Canal for Denmark - ships based at Rostoc can exit directly to the Nth Sea.

Finaly each ship has a number of hit points and can deal out some damage - eg Transports have 2 hit points, large dreadnought units have 22 or 24, cruisers 6-10, etc. Subs will often sink transports, but will also often only hit them for 1.

As always you have to spend production to fix things, only in this game what you spend on various points in this turn becoems available in 2 turns time, so there's a fair bit of forward planning required.

It takes a bit of getting used to, but it works amazingly well...in GoA at least...IMHO of course.

[targul]

SeaMonkey you may want to take a look at CEAW. It has a pretty good handle on this. Map is larger then SC2 so much more space for the ships to operate in.

[Guest Mike]

but it's essentially the same system - sea units move and fight just like land ones....with the addition that subs can be invisible to the enemy, and convoys are actually units instead of "routes" (IMO "Routes" is more accurate - convoyrs took 10-14 days to cross the Atlantic, and were departing every week).