no, it is better this way

That last one looks awesome.

These are actually bad examples the confusion of the current system. When you have armies convoying all over the place with support, or when the red line overlaps the blue line, then it gets messy. I think it would at least be worth looking into, if someone drew mockups or something for situations where it would be easier to understand.

Look through your and other players games menace. Those are a few examples from my recent games, so they came to mind quickly. If you have better ones, do give them

Those are pretty sweet.

Here are two that I could find:
http://phpdiplomacy.net/map.php?gameID=3622&turn=1
Here's one, it's not immediately clear to me that Italy's Nap-Tun via convoy fails because the fleet did not convoy. If there another unit moved into Tun successfully that turn, it might be even more bewildering.
http://phpdiplomacy.net/mapstore/357/3575/1-smallmap.png
The blue convoy line is barely visible for England's move.

I'm sure there are cases where moves via convoy would also be confusing or ambiguous, but it would be nice to examine the issue on the merits of each.

http://phpdiplomacy.net/mapstore/353/3533/4-smallmap.png
On the (failed) convoy from Berlin to Lavonia via the Baltic, the blue line is entirely invisible.

The convoy from Den - Edi produces no line, as the blue one is under the red movement line.
I think if you move the convoy line to move through fleets it is going to look very confusing as people are going to wonder where it went wrong etc... I'm not sure 2 games out of 3000 is a reason to change it; is it?

The point of having this conversation is to figure that out, not to force an immediate change. There has been specific evidence presented that the current format can be confusing and ambiguous. Rather than just say, "it will be confusing," why not draw up an example of a situation where it would be confusing to show the army passing through the fleets?

i don't find anything confusiong with the examples you presented

i mean, they are all very basic

In those examples I don't think it's very confusing no, but it is messy (thats for the longer ones). The short ones can get very confusing, but maybe the best option is to leave it. All i wanted to do was discuss the issue. No solution is perfect, but I wasn't sure which is least imperfect. Bearing in mind that these are quite rare I guess the current method is simplest, however if a good way of doing it could be made I think following the convoy path would be better

I think it's pretty. =)

Ok, so let's brain storm... Are you proposing move the convoy'ed unit's move arrow through the fleet(s) involved?

So that in fact it would look like a 2 step move (first into the water, second into the land) obviously getting longer as the chain gets bigger?

Holy crap lol that second convoy is beastly

no, i meant menace's

mr. churchill, that does seem to be proposal. I.e., If there is an army in Tunis who convoys via a fleet in Tyrrhenian Sea to Naples, I think I would expect a blue line (like the red ones) to point from Tun to Tyn, and then from Tyn to Nap there would be a red attack line. If a ship in the convoy were displaced, or failed to make the convoy move, the blue line into the body of water would have an X in it like the failed attack lines. If the attack move itself failed (e.g. the province is occupied), then the red line would have an X on it.

This way, if the convoy attack were unsuccessful, you could always tell where the point of failure occurred. It would require the game to pick a single convoy path it situations where there are two or more choices, but I don't think this actually matters at all.

on second thought, I guess it needn't pick a single path; it could draw all possible complete convoy paths.

Menace, that's a good idea, although I would disagree that the second line stemming from the fleet would be red, I believe this also should be blue as otherwise it seems the fleet is attacking the province, not the army. You are also right that it would need to pick a path, but then I don't see how it is done without determining a path. The problem would be indicating a convoy order that had no matching move order (not really possible in F2F) . In the terms of your example, what if I had not moved the army to Tunis? How would the 'failed' convoy b/c of a missing order be displayed differently than another failed convoy? Currently this would be understood b/c of the convoy line pointing in the middle of nowhere...
This would also apply to convoy paths that are not used, as currently this not represented, as all convoys pertaining to the same move will converge in the same spot (the middle of the move line)

Further, that proposal has another great point: support. Support lines would only need to go to the middle of the final line (the line from the last fleet to the coast), which would be the same as if the fleet was moving into the coast itself. That line would be quite clear also.

The issue I see here is the coding needed for the step-by-step convoy route. Although... it would be easy to see where the convoy went wrong! You could simply have an X somwhere along the chain and think, "Oh! my unit in such-and-such was displaced".

Good, glad to have you on board.

I didn't quite know what should be done, it just seems rather messy to me when a convoy from London->Tunis goes straight across the middle of France.

I'm thankful for the welcome, but you didn't answer my question:

"How would the 'failed' convoy b/c of a missing order be displayed differently than another failed convoy?"

I apologize for the quality of these, I am definitely not an artist.
Let's take the Nap-Tun via ION example.
http://img167.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mockup1rc9.png
^ This is what I would expect to see if you entered:
A Nap move Tun (via convoy)
F ION hold
The army tries to convoy onto the ship in the Ionian, but the ship has no orders to convoy, so the first leg of the convoy fails.

http://img164.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mockup2ud4.png
^ This is what I would expect to see in the opposite scenario:
A Nap holds
F ION C Nap-Tun
You can see by the blue line that the fleet tries to convoy, but since the army was told to stay put, there is no blue line heading towards the fleet.

http://img168.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mockup3uw5.png
^ This is an example of what happens when all the commands are in place, but the convoyed attack fails anyway:
A Nap move Tun (via convoy)
F ION C Nap-Tun
F Tun holds (or whatever)
The blue line from Naples to the Ionian does not have an X, because the fleet is in fact available for convoy. The blue line from the fleet to Tunis does have an X, because the attack is unsuccessful.

I should probably try and make some for situations where there are alternate convoy routes and such, but this has already taken me a while and it's late, so I'll only do it if people want more.

Great! I'm all for what you've put in the examples...