Convoy system

[juntoalmar]

If I have understood correctly, player have a set of convoy routes where they can choose to put transport/oilers and scorts. But, how flexible are those routes?

- Can a player create a new convoy route?
- Can a player edit a convoy route?

For example:
- Japan moves to the Indian Ocean and invades Ceylan and part of India (or even the oil camps in Iran). Can the player add a convoy route that doesn't exist in the game?
- Because of the Japanese move, the British player wants to change the route that convoys Australian and Indonesian resources to avoid Japanese interception. Can he change the route to avoid the Indian coast (like crossing the Indian ocean further South or even routing those resources to/through the US/Canada?)

Cheers,

[AlvaroSousa]

Convoy routes are set
Merchant Marine automatically travel routes
Players place their escorts in the zones they want and move ships and subs to where they want to raid.

Players do hunt down surface raiders with fleets though. Escorts scatter when faced with surface ships because they don't have the weaponry to fight them.

[juntoalmar]

ORIGINAL: fuzzypup

Convoy routes are set
Merchant Marine automatically travel routes
Players place their escorts in the zones they want and move ships and subs to where they want to raid.

Players do hunt down surface raiders with fleets though. Escorts scatter when faced with surface ships because they don't have the weaponry to fight them.

That seems about right for a European scenario, but when going global, isn't it too restricting? I think that there are potentially too many routes for the game to have them all preset. I'm just thinking unlikely scenarios like Italy going beyond Suez, Japan on the Indian ocean or Australia... the potential routes are endless.

I guess, it's a constraint/abstraction set in order to make the game easier to play (and code!). If it works for 95% of the cases, I guess it's a sensible decision.

[AlvaroSousa]

You hit it on the head. Everything is about a balance when designing a game. It will work in the Pacific. The system is based on my analysis of Micheal Gannon's book Black May on the naval strategic war. It's a good read.

I also wanted to keep that part of the game not tedious.

[juntoalmar]

Interesting book. I will take a look at it when I have time.

Again, thanks a lot for the time you spend answering questions. This is the first time I'm excited about a game since MWiF. I'm more of the taste of grand strategy board games in the WWII, and there are not many alternatives. I remember your introduction story about 3R and I felt we have gone through a similar path...