UBoat Posture

[Arne]

What is the best posture for u-boats?

[Kensai]

If you are traveling to the shipping box and staying there, passive-passive. If you want to attack normally, an offensive posture.

[Palpat]

Is this the same for all ships? Defending and attacking? Corsaire-ing and pirate-hunting?
Always passive-passive and combats will occur?

[Jim-NC]

If not in the shipping box, a fleet needs to be in offensive posture to start a fight (no one owns the sea zone, so no one is forced to switch to offensive - unlike land battles). In the shipping boxes (Atlantic and Med), there is a different mechanism, and thus your fleet doesn't have to be in offensive to find the enemy. The combat is different in the boxes as well, and ships are almost never sunk, or seriously damaged.

[Merlin]

The combat is different in the boxes as well, and ships are almost never sunk, or seriously damaged.

That's not necessarily true. I've had full-on fleet engagements in the shipping boxes with the kind of results you'd expect in the blockade boxes or open ocean.

[Palpat]

So, blue/blue for the shipping boxes. Including for raiders?

And for the blockade boxes? Orange/orange?

[Merlin]

I use B/O for the blockade boxes unless an enemy fleet shows up, then I set mine to O/O/Intercept if I think I can win, otherwise B/G/Evade and run. Everything gets G/G/Evade in the shipping boxes, unless I'm trying to hunt down a fleet, then it's O/O/Intercept again, though I don't think anything beyond Evade matters for the shipping boxes. I think combat works normally in all boxes, but the discovery mechanics work differently in the shipping boxes.

[Kensai]

I think the blockade boxes work as normal sea regions. Ace also confirmed that. The shipping boxes is a different story. There shouldn't be battle there at any time: what was happening for example in the Baltic shipping box was a bug. There the battle should be totally abstracted. The overseas sea regions (oceans) have a mixed game: battle can happen normally but lone German raiders even in passive mode should be able to score some WSU losses to the Western Entente every now and then.

Pocus or Altaris could confirm if all this is WAD.

[Merlin]

I'm going off my very first WE game when I was trying to figure everything out. I had assumed the shipping boxes worked the way they do in CW2, and it definitely seemed that way, with both the HSF and Grand Fleet sitting in the Atlantic shipping box for a few turns. Then there was a full-on general fleet action complete with combat summary, and Athena tried it again when I had the Channel Fleet there with similar results. While the blockade box seemed to more or less guarantee same-turn combat when one or both sides were set to offensive posture, the shipping box took much longer. Finding subs and merchies set to G/G or G/G/Evade is quite difficult, but fleets set to offensive posture eventually (2-3 turns) seem to find their counterparts with normal combat occurring subsequent discovery.