Points of sail on a hex grid Part 1

I really truly recommend playing out ship chases and ship battles on a square grid.  It's just so much easier than all the weirdness hexes bring to a 32-point direction system.  However, I realize that pretty much everyone maps their game worlds in hexes, so ships need to be able to move on hex grids too.  I guess if you're bent on ignoring my recommendation for a square grid, you'll have the tools to run battles on hexes as well.

Before we start, we need to acknowledge that there are two main orientations of hex grids.

Vertical:

And Horizontal:

They're going to be somewhat related, but different enough that we'll start with the vertical orientation and move on the horizontal once the difficulties are already hammered out.

The next thing we need to do is establish a standard notation for direction.  I've decided to designate each direction with a letter, so that I can use numbers to represent the number of hexes moved in that direction.  It's a lot easier to say "4A1B" than "four hexes in the direction of grid north, then one hex 60 degrees clockwise".

So here is the standard notation for a vertical grid, with the black dot as the starting point.

North is obviously direction A.  Easy peasy.

Moving clockwise, North by East will be, as I said above, four hexes in direction A and one in direction B, or 4A1B.

North Northeast is a little weird.  The best way to keep moving in the proper direction is to move two hexes in direction A, one in B, one in A, and then one more in B before repeating the pattern.  In other words, 2A1B1A1B.

Northeast by North is even weirder.  We'll just call it 1A1B, but if you plot it out on the grid, it actually drifts ever so slightly east from this plot over time, but 1A1B is close enough and way simpler than a slightly more accurate plot.

Northeast is 1A3B (although I suppose you could go 3B1A, it works out the same).

Northeast by East isn't exactly direction B, but we would be crazy not to simplify things by using it.

East Northeast runs 5B1C.

East by North is 2B1C.

East could be 1B1C, but I'm going to go a different (possibly heretical) route.  Instead of staying strictly in the hex centers, I'm going to say you can alternate moving from hex center to the line between hexes as a one space move, and notate it as B/C.  (It's the same distance; measure it if you want.)  If a ship is currently on the line between hexes while traveling East, and fires at or is fired on by a ship to the north or south, add 1/2 of a hex worth of distance to the total range.

Further directions are mirror images of the preceding ones.

East by South - 2C1B

East Southeast - 5C1B

Southeast by East - C

Southeast - 1D3C

Southeast by South - 1D1C

South Southeast - 2D1C1D1C

South by East - 4D1C

South - D

South by West - 4D1E

South Southwest - 2D1E1D1E

Southwest by South - 1D1E

Southwest - 1D3E

Southwest by West - E

West Southwest - 5E1F

West by South - 2E1F

West - E/F

West by North - 2F1E

West Northwest - 5F1E

Northwest by West - F

Northwest - 1A3F

Northwest by North - 1A1F

North Northwest - 2A1F1A1F

North by West - 4A1F


And I'm going to end this post here.  I'll go over the horizontal orientation in the next post.