Mon Feb 23, 2015 12:04 pm
The ships in the Blockade Boxes represent ships which were actually stationed along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts trying to intercept enemy shipping entering and exiting the harbors along the coasts. In reality attacks on and interception of blockade runners occurred her and rarely in the open seas, especially because the blockade runners were specially built or modified to be very fast, in comparison with the Union Navy's ships tasked with opposing them.
The game doesn't handle this exactly historically, but pretty close. When blockade runners enter and exit the Blockade Boxes there is an increased chance of them being caught and attacked by blockading ships. This can work the other way around too. Union ships entering and exiting the Blockade Boxes--from my experience--have a greater chance of finding and attacking blockade runners.
This concept will also work for hunting down raiders in the Shipping Box. Sending a fleet into and then back out of the Shipping Box will increase the chance of finding and attacking raiders.
Of course doing this will cause Wear-n-Tear™ on your fleets, which will have to return to port that much more often to recover hits and cohesion loss, and the whole process will require you to manage your navy that much more, so it depends on how much time you are willing to put into managing your navy.
