Check my Understanding of Hexes and Sea Areas and SUch

[BlindGuyNW]

Hi ALl,

So I'm trying to understand how sea areas work, particularly concerning convoys and related matters. I'd appreciate it if anyone could tell me whether the below is accurate.

Sea areas are named, Hawaiian Islands, or Red Sea, for instance. They are made up of hex dots, which are more or less just like hexes except they are explicitly not for land units.

Each sea area has a concept of "sea boxes." Sea boxes are used to position units for search and combat purposes. The location of sea boxes is abstract, in that it doesn't have any relation to the hex dots.

Convoys are positioned in sea areas. As far as I understand it, the exact hex dots a convoy occupies aren't important, since they are notionally always in sea box 0 anyway.

Therefore, as far as I know I don't have to line convoys up hex dot by hex dot to trace routes across large sea areas, I just have to make sure the number of convoy points in each area is sufficient. For instance, in Global War, the U.S. has setup rules about the convoys to Japan, but the exact dots those convoys occupy doesn't appear to matter.

Is this about right?

Thanks all,
Zack.

[Joseignacio]

Yes. All of what you mentioned is correct.

[Courtenay]

The program actually implements which sea box a naval unit is in by exactly where it is on the map. Each side has a 5 sea boxes in each sea area (0, 1, 2, 3, 4), usually in a straight line, although sometimes (for example, in the Baltic, where there isn't room) it is not. All of a sides units in a particular sea box will be in the same hex. Thus all of one sides convoys, for example, will always be in the same box in a sea area.

MWiF does not ask (or allow) you to place naval units in specific hex dots in a sea area; rather, when you move naval units to a sea area, MWiF will ask you which sea boxes they are going in, and puts them there.

[ashkpa]

I also believe the location of the sea boxes does determine which weather zone is applied to that sea zone for naval combat. That may not make a difference in MWIF, but it does in a few areas of the actual board game (particularly for coastal hexes).

[Joseignacio]

ORIGINAL: ashkpa

I also believe the location of the sea boxes does determine which weather zone is applied to that sea zone for naval combat. That may not make a difference in MWIF, but it does in a few areas of the actual board game (particularly for coastal hexes).

In the board game, the weather is determined per weather area, the sea areas included are all with the same climate, and there is no difference in the weather whether you are in box one or box 3 within that sea.

What matters is the weather modifier, depending of the penalisation of the box, which is related to (box penalisation number and) weather which varies depending of position, but the climate is the same.

Both aspects are treated here just like in the board game.

I hope I understanding you well and addressing correctly the comment.

[brian brian]

Normally WiF has 2 introductory scenarios to begin learning the rules systems. Barbarossa, for air & land combat, and Guadalcanal, for the full air/land/sea combo.

But probably the simplest way to learn how sea zones and naval combat work with units-on-map would actually be the Barbarossa scenario, which would only use 2 zones, that aren’t connected, and minimal naval units on each side.