CAMPAIGN NAVAL SYSTEM PRIMER

The Naval element of the campaign system has two fundamental purposes:

1> To allow land campaigns to take in considerations of port conquests, sea supply, and overseas communications.
2> To allow some opportunities for casual naval miniatures games (squadron on squadron generally).

A danger with the naval system is that it can send armies flying all over the map of Europe in an effort to win campaigns but actually results in making it more difficult to get land combat fights, which is the primary goal of the Campaign system. As such, the fog of war/intelligence/communication system used for the navies is not as stringent as it is for land armies. 

Command Concepts

 The player character is, for land combats, assumed to be the general in your headquarters. That is your perspective for all land operations and couriers will be required to communicate across distances with other units or players. For navies though, it would be unreasonable and impractical to try managing a fleet from a saddle in central Germany. Therefore, there is a conceit that commanding your navies might be being done by another command character, one who is dedicated to navies and has his own staff.

Fog-of-war and communications with ships uses different standards in order to make them manageable.

Couriers are not required to give orders to fleets and fleets do not send couriers with updates.

Naval Squadrons

This system does not track individual ships and nor do squadrons have damage tracked. Every squadron is assumed to seaworthy. Getting new squadrons is done by simulating the ordering to assemble ships together at a specific location. Likewise, a dispersed or destroyed squadron is simply one that has its various elements damaged or dispatched for other duties.

To assemble a squadron takes 5-9 days and can only be done at major ports that are under your control. Each player begins play with a number of Fast Fleet Tokens. The British players get 6, all others get 3. You can use these tokens to make an assembling fleet instantly available. These are designed to allow some at start fleets.

Squadrons come in three variations:

Battle Squadrons are tactically slower and with heavier ships. They will have a first rate ship among them. They cost 9 points
Patrol Squadrons are tactically faster with moderate ships, second and third rates. They cost 5 points.
Transport squadrons are required to transport land forces and have no combat capability. Transports cost 3 points.

Tactical speed affects the chances of a fleet catching another fleet when one squadron is hoping to intercept another. It does not affect strategic/campaign map speed.

You will find that squadrons come and go much easier than land divisions. You can disband them anywhere, anytime, for example. Losing a battle will get a squadron destroyed half the time. The loss of squadrons represents positional and time setbacks.

Seas and Ports

Link to Sea Map

Not every coastal town or city is considered a port. Ports are marked on the maps and each port is on a specific sea so that naval traffic into or out of it must go through that sea. Major Ports are exactly like other ports but new squadrons can be assembled there (if they are controlled). Squadrons at  a port will automatically dock there if they control the port and that port is not blockaded by enemies. Fleets cannot dock if they do not control the city unless they are disembarking troops.

Some seas, as indicated on the naval map, are considered adjacent to one another. Every sea is considered adjacent to something called 'open seas'

Open Seas is a vague location at sea that has no combat in it and cannot be contested or controlled. There are a small number of ports that are in corners outside trade routes that are considered to be bordering on Open Seas. Falmouth, England is one such example.

Naval Intelligence

On each of the naval pages you'll see a listing of all of your squadrons on the right. It gives quite a bit of information so that you'll know if orders are en route to them, where exactly they are, what their orders are, and if they are engaged in battle.

You should be able to see all the fleets of your alliance.

On the Naval Orders page, you can get some very useful naval intelligence from the Naval Results Summary. This shows the results of battles fought over the past week. It will list each sea and, though it will not show what the different strengths there are now, you will see how many squadrons of what type have been defeated (sunk or forced to retreat) in each sea. Also, it will list who currently controls a sea.

The only way that you can know for certain who has control of a sea is for ships to contest it.

 Losses also are included in a sea for all fights at ports adjacent to that sea.

If Fleets successfully breakout past a blockade, this is where you will see the information.

In all cases, there will be no message by courier or email to alert you to these developments. You will be advised to keep a weather eye on the Naval Results Summary if you are engaged in Naval warfare.

Ordering Squadrons

Compared to armies, ordering squadrons is dirt simple. From the Naval Orders page, you'll be able to order any of your fleets to any location from the drop down menu. If you order them to an enemy port, it is assumed that they are ordered to blockade that port and they will remain there until they receive new orders (or are driven off).

If the checkbox to disembark is checked then that fleet will disembark all of its troops when it reaches the port that they are ordered to.

All orders to fleets have a 1 day delay if they are not at sea and a random delay determined by the size of the sea they are in if they are at sea. You can freely order your fleets anywhere in the world to do anything you like with only a short delay and it without regard to where the orders are being issued from.

Naval Movement

All seas have a size, as indicated on the seas map. When a fleet enters a sea, it gets flagged with a date when they can next move, based on the size of the sea. Sea delay is applied on arrival.

A fleet moving from Portsmouth, England to Lisbon, Portugal would go something like this:

Day One - receive orders
Day Two - Sail from port to English Channel. English Channel has a delay of 1-3 days. We'll say that they get moderate luck and get 2. At that point they get their next move date set to day four.
Day Three - They wait in the English Channel
Day Four - Their date comes up and they move. Because English Channel and Mid Atlantic Ocean are not adjacent, they travel first to Open Seas where they will incur a 4-6 day delay. We'll say 5.
Days Five through nine have them travelling through open seas.
Day Ten the squadron moves to Mid Atlantic Ocean and gets assigned a 3 day wait.
Day Thirteen the squadron arrives in Lisbon harbour.

Changing a fleets orders does not affect its move date so a fleet that had spent two weeks waiting for orders in the English Channel should be expected to move the day after it gets its orders (but these would take a few days to reach it).

Naval Combat

There are three forms of Naval Combat:

Meeting Engagement - If fleets from both sides share a sea (or a port where both are at sea) and neither has orders to move anywhere else, then they will seek each other out for a meeting engagement. Multiple squadrons might get involved in this fight from each side. Transports cannot seek meeting engagements.

Pursuit and Evasion - If fleets from one side are patrolling a sea (have no other orders) and enemy fleets are trying to move through that sea (have another destination), then the patrolling force will attempt to intercept. Patrol squadrons are better for this.

Breakout - If a squadron seeks to leave a port and an enemy squadron is at sea at that port, there will probably be a breakout battle. In a breakout battle, the blockading force cannot suffer damage. The force trying to escape will either break out into the adjacent sea or it will be driven back into port. A failed breakout removes the orders on a fleet.

Fleets are not specifically damaged from combats. They are either destroyed, forced to retreat, or not affected.

As a result of a battle, a squadron may be required to retreat. It sets a port adjacent to that sea as its destination and heads for it at first opportunity. The destination that it selects to retreat to is in priority: fortresses, cities, then towns.

Because we might wish to fight our battles in miniature, all naval fights are only resolved on Sunday nights. The game does not pause for naval battles but rather, the fleets are all held until after Sunday. Players can then fight the battles in miniature and enter in the results before Sunday night.

British squadrons all have +30% combat strength.

Sea Transport and armies

Only Transport squadrons can transport land forces and a single squadron can transport two combat divisions and one HQ division. If a transport squadron is sunk, all units on board are destroyed (Wing HQs are teleported to depot).

Note that orders to embark and disembark onto transports are not done through land communications but are instead done through naval ordering (and therefore does not involve couriers). These are all done through the Naval Transport page.

It is NOT the case that ordering a unit to embark on a squadron will move that division to an appropriate port. You will need to get the units to the port where they should expect to find their transports through regular march orders and this will require couriers. There are five steps to getting your troops doing naval transport:

Step One: Order a transport squadron to a port (Naval Orders page)
Step Two: Order a transport squadron to pick up specific divisions (Naval Transport page)
Step Three: Order divisions to be transported to march to the port where they will find their transports (Divisional or Corps Orders pages)
Step Four: Order the transport Squadron to move to its destination and disembark when it gets there (Naval Orders page)
Step Five: Sort out your lines of communications because those troops, when they unload at the far end are going to be looking for orders to move beyond the destination port (see below).

NOTICE: when a transport squadron has order to transport various land forces, IT CANNOT LEAVE PORT AGAIN UNTIL ALL THOSE UNITS ARE LOADED.

So you can have a squadron of transports at sea, filled to the gunwales with infantry, and not decide where to disembark it until a whim strikes you. The divisions do not get the orders to unload. The transports do.

Naval Communications

The land courier system works smoothly (if slowly) with the naval system. Couriers can travel between points on a line of communication via ports. There is no requirement to have navies to do this.

When building a line of communication, put two consecutive nodes on the line as ports. When couriers reach one of those nodes, they may determine that it naval communications is the best route to take and the courier will go to sea. The delay that the courier will take would be the same as if it was sailing from one port to the other (-1 day per sea). A courier might therefore be able to go from Le Havre to Plymouth with only a single day of delay but from Lisbon to Plymouth may take eleven days.

For Naval Communications to work, the two ports cannot be blockaded and the adjacent seas cannot be enemy controlled. It is alright if they are contested.

Couriers can be sent from sea, with a delay, so you may get reports from your troops aboard ship and if your HQ is aboard ship, you can send orders to your army. For this to work though, there must be line of communication nodes that are in available ports and there will be extended delays.

Getting messages to ships is trickier (I'm working on it). Assume that they won't reach them and instead put some though into Corps Centers of Communications where couriers will wait until an open line becomes available (ie. they reach landfall)

Sea Supply

One of the primary purposes of the naval system was to allow for sea supply. Currently, reinforcements cannot travel by sea but sea supply can be established through depots.

Normally, depots can only be built in cities or fortresses in your home provinces. Through sea supply, and only through sea supply, you will be able to construct depots in foreign territories. You must control the city in question and the city or fortress must be a node on a line of communication and it must be a port.

Depots constructed by sea supply still cost 10 points and still require 7 days before they become operational. Likewise, they still cause point losses and point rewards if they are captured.

If a sea supply depot has its harbour blockaded or its sea controlled by enemy squadrons, it will cease to function temporarily. Clearing the necessary seas will open it again instantly.

Miniatures

If players choose to fight naval combats using miniatures, they can take their results to the Naval Combat page and enter in which of their involved squadrons are dispersed or must retreat.

For now, the house rule is that if any squadron suffers two lost ships, it is considered dispersed.