Playable escorts!
And the ability for escort players to move between escorts, either at will, or at the direction of the "convoy commander" (see below).
Player inter-ship transfer having a 6 minute cool-down period, {preventing one player being able to DC attack with effectively two ships.}
Circa 6 crewable positions on each escort, broadly similar to U-boats.
Once all players leave an escort, it reverts to AI control, and follows an algorithm to rejoin the convoy in the open slot by a route that will not bring it into collision with any ship in the escort screen or the convoy itself, regardless of alert state. This behaviour may be manually over-ridden by the convoy commander to allocate it to a different slot even if already occupied. (the presumption being the 2nd escort will be moved elsewhere before the returning one arrives.)
"Wide" escorts screen - the ability for escort slots to be widened or contracted by the convoy commander.
Convoy commander (CC): A playable (escort) position whereby he can send AI escorts to wide or contracted screen positions, or two patrol a particular area for a set amount of time. Once a player crews the captain position on that particular escort, he can see the ordered manoeuvre on his map, but is not constrained to obey it.
CC can also vary the convoy course up to twice an hour, up to +/- 15 degrees. If the command is given whilst convoy alerted, the convoy will adjust to the new course once the alert is over.
If the CC is killed, the position becomes open to all other escort players, or the original CC if he logs back in and no-one had taken the role in the interim.
"Nice to have" - related to the above
1. A scoring system, the values of which can be tuned over time. The faster the U-boats obtain the target tonnage, the higher their score. The loss of U-boats diminishes the score.
2. If the escort screen sinks 1 or more U-boats, prevents the tonnage being achieved within a specified time period, damages U-boats, the higher their score.
3. The relative scores are not known to players until game-end, at which point all discover who won.. Moaning by players in the forums can be employed to tinker with the score values obtained by the metrics above! <grin>
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