Trade Warfare

[The Rock Doctor]

Something I'd find useful is a simple/generic system for resolving trade warfare during a war. 

Ideally, the system would consider:

Side A:

-Amount of shipping
-Number and/or type of escorts and scouting assets
-State of relevant tech (ASW, others)
-Tactics (convoys or not)

Side B: 

-Number and type of submarines
-Number and types of raiders
-State of relevant tech (subs, signals, etc)
-Tactics (Wolfpacks, barriers)

Environment:

-Weather
-Geography (Large open ocean, chokepoints, etc)

...plus other factors as appropriate.

Throw a minimal number of dice and you get an amount of trade tonnage sunk, escorts lost/damaged, raiders and subs lost/damaged.  Probably over the span of a month of game time.

What do you think?  Practical?

[miketr]

On the subject of tactics, especially with aircraft and subs there is the matter of target ID.  The attacking force needs to ID the targets to confirm its a hostile merchant ship and not friendly or neutral.  The more liberial the rules of engagement for the attackers the quicker they can take out the target and less likely to run into trouble for themselves.  This is very true for subs as in our time period sub are going to do most of their killing with deck guns. 

Michael