ND your always confused, and confusing others, like me!
K, I'll try and clarify, it'll look simpler once the map and stuff is up, but here-goes; Basically what Kelly said is right, a turn will be what you PM me for this weeks orders. The orders will be a list of choices spanning about ten rounds/moves. So an example turn for an axis player might be:
Leave Hamburg Port/enter German Waters (1round) German Waters to North Sea (1round) North Sea to Straight of Denmark (2rounds) Straight of Denmark to Eastern North Atlantic (2rounds) remain hunting in Eastern North Atlantic for all remaining rounds, assuming no serious damage is taken (4rounds).
That'd be orders for all ten rounds of a turn, they might not all get executed because a fight on the way to the Eastern North Atlantic might cost a round or two, but assuming all goes swimmingly, orders for all ten are given. Let's say the axis player really wants to get to the relative safety of the Eastern North Atlantic. Well now he could also PM me this, ignore all fights en-route. So now if he spots a little British convoy in the North Sea, he'll pass it by, so as not to waste an extra round in the North Sea. He can't stop fast Allied units from drawing him into a fight, but at least he wont start any of his own now. If he wanted to, he could get more specific, ignore all pithy convoys en-route, but if a nice juicy fleet smaller than mine strays my way, then engage. So basically, how complicated this game gets is largely in your hands, it really depends on how detailed you make those instructions for me each week (we could go faster than once a week, but only if everyone did, and not 'till I've had a breather after finishing these endless little subtleties). So that's how a turn goes, roughly! There's more to do too, but that's the basics.
Fleet management doesn't have to be done once a week, you have say three ships, you just have to describe their behavior with a few quantitative questions and a few qualitative questions. Like your cruiser the HMS ExampleShip, likes to close distance to range 2 on smaller ships, to range 1 on battleships, will fight without attempting withdraw to roughly half damage or half the weapons lost, these kind of questions are quantitative, plus some all purpose questions that cover situations that are too varied to pre-plan like, in general, the battleship Vanguard is a prize to protect, so withdraw anytime she's threatened, my cruisers are her expendable escorts, if we're doing good in a fight then don't quit on one of their accounts. These kind of qualitative questions will help me ALOT when compiling a fight.
Finally there's the ships you actually own. Every player will have the same starting budget, so guys who started with the big ships will probably put to sea with one or two destroyers in the wings and little else besides their prize battleship. Cruiser players might get off with three or more medium sized cruisers in their fleet and have leftovers for a destroyer or two. Ships are bought of the master list I'll put up, on the dreaded-long-time-consuming website. The website won't be dynamic or anything, just a reference, PM your choices and so on, btw everyone will be allowed to take back their initial choice if they want to since they made it without seeing ship stats/prices. That isn't too complicated, buying 3-7 ships shouldn't be hard, and that's as complicated as it 'has' to get.
You can use parts of your budget to tweak what a ship is outfitted with, but the emphasis is can, most ships are pretty decently outfitted at the start, btw sold items yield nothing, including starting sets. So buying a ship and changing everything will be costly, especially since you pay for all its starting armament too.
Events and stuff going on during our alternate WW2 will keep things interesting too.
Now
*looks up* that... probably, made, things, more, complicated, didn't, it.
