Exposed naval assetts

[Uxbridge]

This may have been up before, but since it just occured to me, I might as well mention it.

One of the most disheartening aspects of the naval game, is that it is fought blindly. You haven't much of an idea what enemy forces is in the sea areas. Why not show this in the displays. Instead of having, as an example, the figure "2" in the BB window, informing of 2 friendly battlegroups, we could have "2/1" telling us that there's 2 friendly and 1 enemy battlegroup there. The interception system is randomized anyway, so we can't control what attacks what, but we could see where the enemy has "activity".

Realistic? Not really. But seeing nothing isn't very realistic either. I think seeing both friendlies and enemies would put much more punch into the naval game.

The air recon over sea would thus be obsolete, but I for one could live with that.

[Harbinger]

I tend to agree here. It seems illogical that there would be zero information on the whereabouts of the enemy fleets. The Naval Phase at the end of the turn does provide some information, and I find this to be just enough. It makes for interesting decisions about allocating the available naval and possible air assets.

[Uxbridge]

Not really sure whether you actually agree or disagree here. [:)]
 
The problem with the end of turn is that its only the last player of the turn that gets to see it. The others are blind.

[Harbinger]

Yeah....I should have said "during solo play". Since I have not yet entered into the pbem multi-play arena, the lack of naval information for all except the last player had not occurred to me.

With that little nugget on info in hand, I fully agree there should be some on map or in screen information regarding naval assets.

[Uxbridge]

Yes, well, probably way to big change to see happen now. We'll have to wait for ToW II.

[Manalishi]

I wonder if the last player in a pbem turn could just make notes or take screens of all the naval activity and pass it to the other player(s)?
 
Not a perfect solution, obviously, and it could possibly place a rather large burden on the last player in a turn. But it is a start. Obviously not all players will be interested in all the information, so it could be distributed by relevance. Especially in a three, four or five player game (IE: the Soviets likely dont care much about sub sightings in the Western Atlantic, and the US doesnt care about a cruiser battle in the Black Sea). Or, the last player could just pass the info to the designated "leader" of a faction, who could in turn distribute the info to the pertinent party.
 
Just a suggestion. It is not likely to get fixed any time soon, so we may as well try to develop some house rule for it.
 
 
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[Mike Parker]

actually its the first player that gets the Naval stuff.&nbsp; The last player gets the events and then the first player gets Naval stuff.&nbsp; But in my pbem game we just either screenshot or give notice on the events.

[swatter555]

I greatly enjoy the naval aspect of the game, but don't get me wrong it has problems. Most other games on this scale attack the naval issue in a less abstract manner, compounding shortcomings in the AI. I love the idea of using a different scale (sea zones and ports instead of hexes) to make the naval part of the game more compact and easier for the AI to deal with. The AI still has trouble in all honestly, but it does put up a good fight.

As for the OPs issue, I think this issue could be handled elegantly and realistically with intelligence reports in a similiar way we are informed of other game issues not portrayed on the map. I don't think this would pose a huge coding issue and would easily fit into the system.