Can ships patrol anywhere?

[ulver]

Am I missing something or can ships patrol anywhere?

There doesn’t seem to be anything preventing the Russians patrolling the Baltic from a Black Sea port or vice versa.

Does it make any difference what port a squadron is based in?

[7th Somersets]

I believe that ships can patrol anywhere.
 
I think, given the timescales of the turns that this is historically correct.
 
BUT from my experience - when you sail your small flotilla on a long journey it tends to bump into a lot of enemy ships en route. Be careful.

[ulver]

Thanks for the quick reply. Can ships rebase to allied ports? Could be quite mischivious if the German High Sea fleet can rebase to Med and suddenly suprise the the Allies there and an British fleet in the baltic might be useful as well.

[FrankHunter]

Ships can be ordered to patrol anywhere, they can't actually patrol anywhere.  For example Russian ships can't exit the Black Sea if the Ottoman Empire is at war with them.

[ulver]

a) Pretty cool to have this explained by the designer
b) Can British ships rebase to Petrograd and/or patrol the Baltic from Southampton.
c) Is there any way to tell from the map what ports are in what sea zones?

[SMK-at-work]

It was a problem identified in beta testing - from Frank's answer it looks like he's at least partially solved it.....although it still lets the russians rebase the black sea fleet on T1, which is not really kosher - although it's great for the Turks - if they can get a few points from Germany to build some transports they can wreck havoc with amphibs in the black Sea!! [8D]
 
it was also identified that major ships should not be able to rebase past the Danish straights - historically they could, but the risks were massive which isn't really represented in gameplay, so IMO a better option is to prevent it.

[sol_invictus]

These might need to be house rules for PBEM games until a patch.