The elegantly-kludged sea zone will be 9 hexes across (containing a total of 61 hexes)-a 4-hex radius around a given central hex. There are numerous reasons for this. At first I wanted to go with a 7-hex sea zone; I had lots of ideas why. Seeing Supermarina gave me a few more reasons; but then Victor Hauser's comments on the draft article pushed me over to the 9-hex model, mainly on account of existing Europa philosophy, plus mapping and graphics concerns. In any event, I have 9 main reasons for suggesting the 61-hex sea zone.

Reason 1-Battle Size.

Cape Matapan takes place in 2 zones; each historical combat of a Malta convoy with waiting U-boats, MTBs, or air groups takes place in a distinct zone along the route. Ditto PO-17. We'll never find a zone size to fit all battles exactly, but this is very close.

Reason 2-The Sea-Travel Tactical Uncertainty Principle (physicists take note).

If we take the minimum seakeeping speed of a vessel as about 3 or 4 knots, then a sea area 9 hexes across represents just over the minimum distance of travel by that vessel during the 40 hours which is our minimum increment of time. No ship will go less than one sea zone in a time segment, and multiples of 3 or 4 knots are about as accurate as we can be in assessing ship speeds, given varying weather conditions, currents, zig-zagging, etc. We don't need silly overdetailing arguments or gamesmanship based on making a destroyer go 688 hexes in 15 days, rather than 689.

Reason 3-Compatibility with Air Operations.

A 4-hex radius is the official radius for Europa antishipping operations, the maximum for most patrol attacks, and generally a common number in air operations. Nine hexes across means every sea zone has a natural center hex for flying distances (like the arbitrarily chosen flying hexes in TFH). There is virtually no aircraft that can't fly at least 6 hexes, so even the lowliest torpedo-carrying biplane can set up a patrol in an adjacent sea zone.

Reason 4-Granularity.

9-hex sea zones conveniently separate large (i.e., major) ports in the Mediterranean and elsewhere into functional groups. Convoys leaving Tripoli won't automatically pass Malta, as they would with a bigger standard sea-zone size, but they'll feel Force "K" breathing on their necks, one or two zones away. The north side of Crete, where the ports are, will be in a completely separate zone from the evacuation area on the south side. I will discuss the Channel and the French coast another time; that is a pretty serious special study in itself. For now, I ask you to take it on faith that zones will work there too.

Reason 5-Minefields.

These are important, and most games neglect them. Mines vastly exceed battleship operations and maybe even surface gunnery generally in importance, in terms of tonnage sunk, strategic possibilities blocked or opened, and effort expended. (I should acknowledge my bias here; I write technical proposals, videos, and brochures for a defense company that makes, among other things, remotely operated minehunters. No more sales talk, I promise.)

With sea zones, all the various minefield rules from a half-dozen games are condensed to one much simpler one. This includes the nets and minefields off Kronshtadt, the minefields around Malta and the Sicilian Narrows, and the German mine barriers for Operation Sealion. Other possibilities include the British barrier fields in the North Sea, the mining of the Norwegian Leads (which ought to be Britain's original gambit in Narvik), the Turkish defense of the Dardanelles, or Spain mining Gibraltar.

All these and many more can be covered by one standard rule about two or three sentences long. The standard zone size I'm suggesting covers each one of these operations to a good approximation (e.g., the Sicilian Narrows minefield in Supermarina was painstakingly mapped out at 30 hexes; it would be maybe 40 or 50 in my version, and functionally the same).

Reason 6-Coastal Craft and MTBs.

The overhead of activating and moving such craft is much reduced by sea zones. Fast patrols under cover of darkness will move only one zone before returning to port, so we could simply assume, given an MTB in a port bordering a particular zone, that it will try to intercept anything that passes through. Like any border regiment or defensive AA "ant", the counter just sits there. We can even give ports intrinsic subchasers and such, eliminating the counter entirely.

Reason 7-Compatibility with the Europa Scale.

This is really important: my proposed rates of operational movement and sea-zone size fit current Europa counters. Given that we have to use what is already printed on the counters, the zone size should be between 5 and 10 hexes. There are problems with letting a destroyer move 810 or even 900 hexes in a 15-day turn (fuel shortage being just one), but over the short distances normally traveled in European naval operations, a 9-hex sea zone is just about right.

Reason 8-Grid Production.

This is not so much a reason for this particular sea-zone size as it is a convenient fact about setting up the grid. Each theatre of operations can be gridded more or less separately. The Mediterranean grid doesn't have to interlock with the Atlantic grid; the Baltic and the Black Seas don't have to interlock with anything. By tweaking the boundaries of individual zones we can resolve any awkwardness on a case-by-case basis.

Actually, size does matter: if zones were much, much larger, like 15 hexes across or more, this wouldn't work out so well. We'd have a lot of irregularly-sized zones.

Reason 9-Submarines.

This comes from the beta version of Supermarina. Submarine flotilla search areas from that system are seven hexes across. It is not a big thing to increase this to 9 hexes, and presumably something like this rule will carry over to Grand Europa. Enough said.

Though I think it excessive myself, I even have a purist's solution to the inevitable ragged exceptions of irregular sea zones produced by constricted sea areas, like the Aegean; for areas that are closer to half of the normal area, use a modified track with only two columns, the "1/3ff and "2/3", and let ships and aircraft enter more cheaply. [/ would not go to this "excessive" extreme and instead justify these small, irregular, coastal sea zones by saying that the restricted waters themselves hamper naval activity within the sea zone-VAH] However, very small areas could be easily eliminated by slightly redrawing a few sea- zone boundaries.

Anyway, let's now look at an actual sea-zone example. On page 36 is an adaptation of part of Supermarina Map 5, supplied in TEM #17. It represents only one of,dozens of possible ways that 9-hex sea zones can be overlaid on the Mediterranean Sea. The three seaboxes in Figure 1 are related to this map.

The Case for Sea Zones The Europa Naval Rules Get a Refit

Introduction
Part 1: Why Sea Zones Should Be Time-Graded (and Fixed-Radius)
Part 2: The 3-Naval-Phase Sequence of Play
Part 3: The 61-Hex Sea Zone
Conclusion