if an sea zone with a naval base is hostile with enemy ships in it -- can i still build ships on that naval base?

There is no such thing as a contested sea zone.

Personally, I don’t think this should even occur. One round of sea combat only; if the defender survives the attacker must retreat (and can still do so even after a victory).

I can understand the logic behind a land force not being allowed to retreat after a victory - they have to consolidate their hold over the conquered tt.

But why would ships remain behind in an empty sea zone, especially if they can retreat back into a friendly port for repairs and/or reinforcements from newly launched ships? Unless they wish to launch amphibious assault or enact USW why should they be obliged to remain behind and quite possibly become sitting ducks for enemy fleets? A case of being punished for success?

The anomaly occurs when a player places new ships into a sea zone occupied by enemy fleet. Should a battle immediately occur? Or should the new ships only be “launched” in his next movement/combat cycle?

I think “stay in port” from Larry means remain within the protection of your “home” SZ. Effectively, the Adriatic is the home port for the Austrian fleet.

@Tavenier:

I wish I knew how to do that!

Download the Battlemap app in the Software section of the Forum and I will teach you how.

Thank you very much for the help

Welcome, blindingblizzard!

@blindingblizzard:

The rules state that U.S. ships cannot move into contested sea zones.Â

There is no such thing as a contested sea zone.  The rule states that the US may not move units into a contested territory.  (For clarifications on this, see the FAQ thread.)

In your example, Germany may choose to either include the US ships in its attack, bringing the US into the war, or ignore them.

@ragnell804 All hits must be applied. The transport is destroyed. If the Ottomans had scored only 1 hit, the Italians could have broken off the attack and saved the transport, at least for the time being.

Krieghung, thanks for the quick response.  That poor Russian battleship in SZ12 has to thread the needle through SZ11 and SZ10 even if there are no ships there and I guess once the UK Navy is gone in SZ29, you just need to start ground pounding your way through Ottoman to get into the fight.

@WILD:

So I was thinking, instead of mandating naval battles only go one round, why not just give both parties a retreat option (TBD). In many cases this would self restrict naval battles to one round.

Yes, but when you retreat, the other is not allowed to chase you. In real naval battles it is common to chase each other, but in a game that kind of behavior violates the turn order.

I think time is an issue. A game turn is considered to be like 6 months, while a real life naval battle usually took less than a day. On top of that, our ships seems to be stuck in their little seazone. In the real world a ship could easily sail around the world in 6 months, as is the length of a game turn. Now imagine that in a game, a ship with unlimited movement.

I think in order to make a game that behave as close to the real world as possible, we must analyze every naval battles from 1904 to 1945, and then we will see that WiF is the game that come close, and that Axis and Allies has a long way to go.