The Options screen pictured below allows you to enable or disable the event messages you see when running and replaying a turn.
You get to this screen by clicking on the 'Options' button or the 'o' hot key from either the Run Turn or the Repay Turn screen.
If you are running the turn (and not just replaying it) it also allows you to enable or disable the ability to make hour-by-hour tactical responses for your fleets and air strikes.
Click on the 'X' button or the 'q' hot key to close the screen. If running the turn, calculation will resume; if replaying it, the replay will resume.
The options you select are saved are the end of the run turn calculation or when you manually save a game, and will be in force when next you run or replay the turn. You can change the options again at any time of course.
Click the 'Air Avoidance Options button' takes you to a dialog for setting values affecting how your fleets attempt to avoid enemy power when plotting routes.
See air avoidance options for more information.
These are available during turn calculation, but not during replay.
When you tick any of the four control options at the bottom of the screen, the turn calculation will stop whenever necessary - in response to updated intelligence of the enemy - to show you a dialog box for changing tactical response or retrun to base orders for your fleets, or for aborting or amending planned air strikes.
See tactical responses for more information.
When the turn is being calculated or replayed, not only will you see your fleets move on the map, you will also see enemy fleets highlighted when they are spotted, and will see many different kinds of event messages telling you what is happening hour-by-hour.
Some players will want to see all or most messages; others may want to keep the "noise" to a minimum, concentrating on a selected few messages, such as reports of battles. As always in SAS, the choice is yours.
To see any type of message during calculation or replay, tick the relevant 'See...' tickbox. Note that all message types are ticked by default.
The 9 message types listed on the left of the screen are special - they are the more significant events, usually battle reports, for which the added option of a 'stop for' during turn calculation is available. Tick any to force the calculation to stop whenever a message of this type is displayed. The default is for no stops to be enabled.
Whilst stops only occur during calculation when these are explicitly enabled, the default behaviour during replay is for all events to cause a stop. You do not explicitly enable these stops - they are enabled by default.
You can cancel all stops by unticking the 'stop' tick box on the control bar for the replay screen.
The messages appear on the map in one or more popup boxes. They are all moveable if needed if they are currently obscuring parts of the map that are of interest. (Or the map can also be dragged around).
The message boxes appear by default in the top left of the screen.
To move a box if you want to see beneath it (instead of just moving the map instead) just click on the box and drag it.
To return it to its default position, just move the mouse off it. The box will "snap" back to its default position.
The message boxes have scrollable text, and also point to the map location of the event. Make sure you scroll down to get the full text.
The boxes are colour coded: red boxes are for critical events such as battle reports (aerial; surface; submarine; bombardment and amphibious assaults) as well as ship sinkings and mine damage. Black is for enemy signal intercepts, while pale red is for enemy sightings and emergency fleet orders. Other colours are for less critical events: brown boxes show air strikes as they move; yellow boxes show cargo handling, and green boxes are used for everyday events such as ship refuelling and repairing.
See event messages for an overview of the nearly thirty different messages you can see during turn calculation and turn replay.