Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz

What transits

Crude oil tankers and LNG carriers dominate the tonnage. Alongside them run container ships serving Gulf ports, bulk carriers, car carriers, and a steady volume of smaller regional traffic including dhows.

The largest crude carriers are among the biggest moving objects on earth, and they do not stop or turn quickly. A loaded VLCC needs miles to come to a halt.

Why the passage is demanding

Three things compound. The lanes are narrow relative to the vessels using them. Traffic density is high and mixes very large ships with much smaller, more manoeuvrable ones. And the channel bends near its narrowest section, so course changes happen where there is least room.

Add heat haze, occasional dust reducing visibility, and heavy fishing activity, and a passage that looks trivial on a small-scale chart becomes a watch that bridge teams plan for carefully.

What the game borrows and what it invents

The game borrows the shape of the problem — a long transit, a narrow usable channel, a choice between a safe long way round and a risky short cut, and cargo you can lose without losing the ship.

It invents everything else. There is no real counterpart to the drifting hazards, the shore batteries or the salvage containers, and the handling model is arcade physics rather than anything resembling ship dynamics.

Common questions

How long does it take a ship to transit the strait?

A few hours for the strait itself at typical commercial speeds, though the full passage between the open ocean and a Gulf berth is considerably longer.