brian brian
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Joined: 11/16/2005
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The number of the box represents time spent in the sea area. Each ship is rated for total range (fuel capacity - how many zones it can enter), and speed (how many movement points it can spend). Each zone costs one point of range and one movement point, and each higher box costs one additional movement point.
Faster ships can thus cover more of a sea area in the same amount of time, represented by the higher box. Ships that attempt to patrol a sea zone when starting from a distant port will be able to spend less time in their destination area, so they end up in a lower box as they use their movement points to reach the zone they are moving to.
Air units can only enter the sea boxes from a coastal hex in that zone, and their hex-based movement points work a little differently, as they pay the box # to enter each higher box, cumulatively, so only the longest range planes can enter the highest boxes.
(And no, the USN or other navies refueling at sea isn't represented per se but is probably a part of the factors on the counters).
Generally being in a lower box represents moving through a zone (an intercepted task force must be placed in a box for combat), or having reached the zone from a port one or more zones away.
There isn't much screening in the current rules set. In surface combat, the owning player selects ships to suffer the combat results, so his transports and CVs are effectively screened as long as he has enough surface combat ships to take all the results. Unless the enemy player surprised his forces and can spend surprise points to select the targets instead. In naval air combat, each side alternates picking a combat result and the juicy targets can't be screened.
WiF uses an I Go You Go system of course, so when you move your naval forces out to sea, they are sitting there when the other player can then move his forces into the zone. At that point either player can decide to initiate combat, and each side rolls "search dice" to see if their forces find the enemy. It is as likely as not this fails to produce any combat at all if each side rolls higher than the highest number sea-box where they have a unit. It could also turn out that one side has enough "surprise points" to avoid combat altogether if they wish (i.e. they spotted the enemy, but weren't discovered themselves).
If there is no successful search by either side, both sides remain in the zone until the next impulse, when combat could possibly be initiated again. After any round of actual combat, either side may abort the combat by returning all of their units in every box in the zone to port. This can't be intercepted in that particular zone, but if the aborting forces must cross into another zone to return to port, the enemy side can attempt to intercept them in that zone. Speed, i.e. movement points, aren't used for this aside from limiting which ports a unit can return to as they basically make a move back to port in reverse of the moving out procedure, with the same limits of range and movement.
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Help with Sea Boxes - 
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