During the years leading up to the war, do you just have your navies docked or doing naval exercises? Should I still be patrolling important regions and doing convoy escort missions?
Is there any point to patrolling seas or doing convoy escort missions during peacetime?
- Thread starter williampsk
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Both. Once sufficiently trained, they are docked. You can keep doing naval exercises if you want to accumulate naval XP.
No use in doing so. You'd just be wasting fuel.
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I can see a couple of small advantages to having convoy escort/patrol missions in place, prior to war start:
- If the combined sea zones the fleets need to cover are large enough that it would take individual task forces some time to reach their stations.
- If you, as a player, tend to focus on the air/ground war to the extent that you may forget the fleets for a while.
This is first and foremost a war game in design. More peace time naval activities such as patrolling international shipping lanes against piracy is not modelled.
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I know mousetick is right, there is no reason to patrol sea zones during peace - but I have to admit, I do so anyway, for roleplaying purposes.
(e.g. playing the USA, I have a "Coast Guard" protecting my shores loooooong before anybody ever heard of places like "Danzig" or "Pearl Harbour")
I do it because it lets me check if I have enough ships for the number of convoys, and also because otherwise I'd forget.
Haha, you're not wrong either, in the case of the USA! Fuel doesn't matter. You can do anything you like with your navy
If you are playing Japan, you have to pay very close attention to your fuel supplies - essentially micromanage it in order to get XP without using up your oil stockpile. So no naval activity unless absolutely necessary. Capital ships on patrol burn fuel like crazy.
This is more so the reason I asked, because I was trying a run as the UK, and having the world's most powerful navy just sit in port with all those trade routes seemed kind of lame from a realism/roleplaying standpoint.
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Well mostly not just some pirates in the Caribbean those you have to be aware of.
The only practical reason is to estimate and adjust oil imports right before conflict.
I wish I could RP Pirates of the Caribbean as Cuba in 1939.... ARGH!! /PILLAGE AND PLUNDER/
Depends on the nation played. Exercising your navies (if you have the fuel) gives you Naval XP and the units get experience.
Patrolling and escort missions in peacetime still wastes fuel and don't net XP but it does exercise YOU.
You can get a peacetime clue on your strategy by setting everything up beforehand, blocking some sea regions where you realize that you don't have coverage etc depending on which strategic-level scenarios you predict can happen (very handy in MP).
You might realize that you'll be 20DDs short if country X joins the fight because you'd then have to also patrol area X or to shut down the sea-zone for convoys. Or what happens if Axis Spain takes Gibraltar from you as the UK? Routing the long-way around Africa will require escorts in different zones. Maybe the port capacity won't be enough for local repairs or you'll need to build airbases and radar somewhere. Also it will give you an idea on what type of ships to build. Those AA-gun-heavy DDs needed in the Med might be exchanged for depth-charges for the long-haul around Africa etc.
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