Pishtaco said:
I don't understand what point you're making here. To give an example of why large seazones are helpful: you can model naval intelligence as an increased probability that you locate another fleet cruising the same seazone.
I was trying to make several points about the problems with the model of naval range presented here, among them being the notion of hugh seazones. I admit I may have been less than clear.
1. Much of the justification of these big zones seems to be a belief that it was harder to keep the sea than it really was, which I believe is based on confusing naval and purely nautical factors. The main reasons big fleets didn't operate at sea for long periods (say, post 1650), were that:
(a) In peacetime, it would be pointless. Why refit, man, and victual a big fleet, unless you have something you need to use it for.
(b) In wartime, the other guy (usually the RN, but de Ruyter would've been just as big a problem), is trying to nail you. And you're only going operate where there is a stratigic goal. Granted, the other fleet was the primary goal for the RN, but again, this is a military consideration, & built into their policy, not their hardware. French policy, OTOH, saw the fleet as a tool for use against mainly land objectives, not sea control per se.
(c) When he does, the damage inflicted, on both sides, is of a different order than even storms, for the reasons I gave. Further, one form of replenishment WAS vital -- ammunition, but this is again, a military, not a seafaring issue. If you really want to model this, you'd have to distinguish real, fully developed bases, from mere supply/anchorage bases. You couldn't go to Bermuda to repair after a major action, there just weren't the facilities.
2. We are talking about a period when the abilities of navies to keep the sea changes radically; it's about 3 1/2 centuries, & exactly the ones in which this change starts to be marked, & important. Any size of sea zone has to be useful for both 16th and 18th C navies. The Armada had all sorts of trouble getting home; if the RN had not stood in the way, there is no reason the Spanish couldn't have made the same voyage, succussfully, at the time of Yorktown. (Note that it's the 1st & last stages of the Armada's voyage that are truely oceanic; the losses around Scotland & Ireland would be coastal, by any standard.) What was a big deal in 1588 just wasn't so in 1750.
If you take this into account, you must (a) make impossible the operations -- warlike operations, not just explorations -- of people like Drake & Da Gama, or (b) either allow the later periods such leeway that the constraints lose much of their meaning, or constrain them unreasonably. If the entire non-coastal Atlantic is, say, 3 or 4 seazones, you will either tie a fleet to a N Atlantic base, so it can't operate off, say Brazil, or you'll be allowing it to operate -- from that base -- off the Cape.
3. People seem to envisage battles in the mid-Atlantic. A fleet is stationed in the N Atl, & has x% chance of intercepting an enemy moving through. This bears no relation to the reality of sea war under sail, even as late as 1789 (or 1815, for that matter). Fleet actions were overwhelmingly fought near land. What happened in mid-ocean, was one fleet tried to follow the other closely enough to engage them near their objective. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not; then you had to just guess. But it was far more hit-&-miss than the Sink the Bismarck paradigm I believe is behind many of the suggestions here. If you're just in the N Atl, you'll be able to wait until he picks an objective, & just go there. There is no way, on this model, to opt for the W Indies, when he's going to Halifax. At least in the game as it is, you can end up misdirected, even if not enough.
I also don't see how the size of sea zones affects the issue of locating enemy fleets, at least positively. The general issue is the same no matter what size they are--the only real difference is the odds. But it would remove any possibility of building in the idea of guessing right or wrong (or at least make it much more difficult).
4. A point I realize I failed to make explicit is the trouble this raises with time-in-transit. To have a big seazone, removes even the limited degree to which the game now reflects the importance of where you are going. If the N Atl is one zone, how do you build in the differences between RN strikes at say, Jamaica, or the St Lawrence, or Cadiz, or Capetown?
5. It also makes problematic any attempt to build in prevailing winds, currents, & storms, & their effects on operations. You can't just say, "the whole Indian ocean is having a storm".
I suppose there are ways you could build in the last 2 factors, but at best they'd have to be very abstract, & very gamey -- subject to player exploitation.
6. Finally, the interaction with coastal zones, & bases, is problematic. What are the Azores, or Bermuda, or Reunion, or any of the many island stations available? Are they little coastal zones in the middle of the big sea zone? Are they bases in the middle of the big zone? If you take the former, you have a coastal area with the same sea zone in every direction, if the latter, you raise the problem of defending it -- how are the odds to be distinguished between intercepting them there from those of intercepting them in transit to somewhere else? And what is range from base supposed to be, x coastal zones + y seazones? Can this model even be made plausible?
Pishtaco said:
From what I have read, the British were able to do sustained naval operations because they had developed, over a hundred years, a professional and more or less honest victualling organization that could obtain high quality food (necessary for it to keep for a long time) in large amounts, and an efficient transport fleet for moving supplies around; and of course they had had a lot of practice.
The amount of food carried by any ships was vast, it was rare for ships to run low in any normal operations. Again, water & anit-scorbutics were the real issue. But there were many ways to replenish this without a base; since most of the world was not well-policed, you could do so at shorelines all over the place, by forage, purchase, barter, or extortion. Further, in peacetime, the ports of almost any nation who didn't really, really hate you, would give relief (& sometimes in war, too). The military side is where the Brits had the edge, in that they WERE able to support major bases (see above) all over the world. But others did too, or at least did until the RN allowed Britain to neutralize or take them.
I am not arguing against time-at-sea constraints, I just would prefer to build them in, as I proposed. Hell, I want it to be MORE likely to lose ships to storm or wrecks, where appropriate. And I want storms to either stop you in your progress, or even push you where you want to go. I'd even have them leave fleets much less effective. But (a) I strongly believe that many of these should be of a military nature (mostly affecting morale), & (b) I believe hugh seazones raise all sorts of problems, add nothing to the game, subtract a lot, make the game less realistic but no easier to play, & heavily constrain further improvements.
I'll tell you what I'd do, if I ever learn to make a map. I'd make sea zones as uniform as possible. I'd have rows of offset squares, running E-W, like a brick wall. As you'd get farther from the equator, some of the lines between horizontally (E-W) squares, would be erased, making them more & more rectagular, & building in an adjustment for the Mercator distortion. (So, if the map were to reach the poles, it'd be one big rectangle.) Then I'd tweak all the coastal zones, to accomodate problems there, sometimes combining, sometimes deleting, borders. If I could, I'd have assymetric movement depending on wind/current, so, e.g., you'd move more slowly, if at all, NW, while faster to the SE.
