Brown or blue, what's best for you?

[Gray Fox]

The Blue Water Blockade is supposed to reduce overall Confederate resources (money/men/metal) by half the percentage shown in the ocean blockade boxes, right? I did a test last night by removing all the blockade fleets so that the percentage was zero in both boxes. I then loaded the Jeff Davis side of the save game. The CSA gained the correct amount of cash for no blockade, but only got one more conscript company and one more war supply. So the actual effect of 35% blockade is to remove about $35, one conscript company and one WS per turn from the CSA pools. If someone else can confirm this, then a new light might shine on the ocean blockade. The same ships would have a greater effect in a brown water blockade of NO and Charleston than in the ocean blockade boxes.

[Ol' Choctaw]

Richmond and Norfolk are still blockaded by Ft. Monroe, are they not?

That means that half the money and WS generated there is gone.

Your blockade is still 10 or 15% but what Richmond alone produces is actually much higher than that. If it is at start it is roughly 50% of their output.

[Gray Fox]

Yes, but even at 10% effect, the CSA should have been losing about 7 conscripts and 5 WS, not just 1 of each. It seemd that the ocean blockade only affected the overall amount of money produced.

[Ol' Choctaw]

I don’t know that it was ever meant to have any effect on conscripts. It is to have an effect on imports.

The blue water is also to impact what the runners can bring in.

It is not an either or system. They work in conjunction.

[Gray Fox]

So it doesn't affect X% of resources then, just money? Blockade runners bring in WS, so shouldn't that also be affected by the blockade? The CSA can print money, sell bonds and raise taxes to increase cash, so the reduction in money by a blockade is basically negligible.

[Jim-NC]

Isn't it only the coastal regions that are effected by the blockade, not everywhere?(I seem to remember this from AACW, but back then all money came from harbors) Thus in game terms, will a factory in Vicksburg lose anything from the blue water blockade? I don't believe it will. That could explain why money goes down, but WS doesn't (especially if most WS are produced somewhere else than harbors).

[Ol' Choctaw]

Runners bring both money and WS. It depends on which is needed more.

IIRC the blockade of Richmond costs the CSA 13 money and 13 WS. I don’t remember what it cuts from Norfolk but it would be about half.

If you think brown water is the only way to go, that is fine. But it leaves the non-port production unaffected.

It seems to me that the 25% reduction of all production from the blue water blockade plus the 50% penalty for direct brown water blockades would do a lot more than just using on or the other. Particularly as the percentages increase.

[Gray Fox]

Yes, but if you have X number of ships, should you blue water for a reduction of maybe $30 per turn to the CSA or should you brown water blockade the big ports to take away the most WS. The CSA has 1k-2k in cash per year from other sources, but they only get around 60 WS per turn and that's it.

[Ol' Choctaw]

Since the brown water blockades can add into the blue water percentage, it would seem to me that you should do both.

The two together are greater than the sum of their parts.