You can give orders to a virtual superior formation with no ships and than press buttons on fleet order screen to push default and conditional orders down the line. I did this after 1)detaching all survey ships from the main fleet into a single TG and 2)splitting that TG into single ships. I think that it may be a good idea to clear all orders from that virtual formation afterwards.

One thing I'd like to see is a way to set the default and conditional orders for every ship on a branch - so I can tell all the survey ships to refuel in X way when down to Y fuel, for example.  (You could, of course, override the general rules for a specific ship.)

It gets very tedious to do that over and over for detached ships;  if there's a way to do it already, I missed it.

EDIT:  Perhaps it would be easiest to just have a checkbox when you detach, saying, "Inherit default and conditional orders from old TG?" or something similar.

Awesome and very like-Traveller work Steve!!

Naval structures,deployment and "follow-in-where-at" are very USEFULL!!

Ty for this jewel piece of work.

Then I can only congratulate Steve on thinking out his features well.

May I suggest an extra function for the org chart next version?
A 'Place all ships in branch in new TG named after branch'. So, for example, if I have a branch named Mobile Battle Group A all ships in the branch (Not sure if sub-branches will count.) will be placed in the TG Mobile Battle Group A. It might also be possible to have sub-branches assigned as escorting TGs.
If the problem of different parts of a TG in different places comes up, a dropdown list of where you want to create the fleet would be handy. The relevant ships would be detached from any existing TGs and set a course to the rally point, and assemble into the fleet there.
I don't know how much work this would be, but it seems like something the Org Chart would benifit greatly from.

I still haven't reached a decision on this (too many possibilities!) and I don't want to rush it so I think I am going to release v5.0 with the org charts and no changes to TFs. This means you will get all the org chart functionality I mentioned in this thread, ships will have a individual TF but that won't have any real game effect (for now) and TGs will still be attached to TFs, which will provide the same benefits as they do now.

To summarise for v5.0
Naval Organization as explained at thread start
Ships are assigned to whatever TF hierarchy they are in on the Org Chart
TGs are assigned to TFs in the same way as now with the same effects and bonuses, which means TGs and the ships within them may have different TF.
No training point penalty for changing TG
All TF bonuses and other effects will apply to TGs, not to ships.

None of the above will have any effect on anyone who doesn't want to use the org chart.

I will add the greater TF detail in the next version, once I have had chance to do it properly.

Steve

I really like this idea! This would make managing the navy a much easier endeavor!

Just as an aside, something to consider in the organization and flag bridge discussion. The current operational organization structure of the US Navy is something like this;

CNO (Chief of Naval Ops)
-CINCPAC (Commander, Pacific)
---7th Fleet (Fleet command)
-----Task Force (Battle, ASW, Logistics, MEU, SSBN, ect)
-------Task Group (Component of the Task Force, such as a Carrier Battle Group, Surface Action Group

Now, thats VERY abbreviated, and doesnt cover the horde of other organizational structures in the US Navy, but its a pretty good example. I think the WW 2 is even simpler.

A WW2 Task Force would consist of several combat divisions of similar class ships (destroyers, cruisers, ect) assigned to a Task Force. Example: Task Force 1, consists of a Cruiser Division of three cruisers, and three destroyer squadrons/divisions of four ships each.

Any component of the Task Force could be assigned to a Task Group, either as individual squadrons or as a group of two or more. The Task Force flag flew on whichever ship was hosting the TF commander. Task group commanders were often the captain of any one of the constituent ships in the group, and they were responsible for Task Group command as well as fighting their own ship. In most cases, these TG commanders were usually one of the squadron/division commanders. This was especially common in destroyer groups. Needless to say, most destroyers lacked flag bridges!

Flag Bridge facilities were common on large capital ships (example, the Royal Navy included flag bridge facilities on most battleships, and the US had them on all fleet carriers) but they were relatively rare on cruisers (more common on long range cruisers pre-ww2), and non-existent on smaller classes of ships. This was mostly due to size, since they were usually assigned to admirals which required large amounts of space for the commanders quarters plus room for all the admirals staff. I would suggest that Flag Bridge facilities would be a requirement for managing a Fleet or Task Force organization, but not necessarily for Task Groups or squadrons/divisions. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to apply a penalty to coordination if the numbers of ships involved in a combat situation if there were not Flag Bridge facilities?

As technology improved, CiC facilities cropped up, and they handled the fleet/force/group coordination more efficiently and faster (think Aegis cruisers), so perhaps flag bridge requirements could be met by CiC facilites as technology improves? If your assuming that command and control facilities are improving over time along with the rest of technology capabilities, than perhaps you could control/coordinate more ships with a Flag Bridge or CIC as the technology improved?

Perhaps as part of the Naval organization, there might be a requirement for "command points" required to sufficiently maintain the fleet/force/group/squadron based on the number of ships present? These command points are satisfied by Flag Bridge or CiC facilities, or by points provided by the commanders. Commanders organizational skills could be reflected by adding a command point bonus or skill, so you could potentially see a really hot destroyer squadron commander performing better than the competition, without the requirements of a flag bridge.

Sorry, I know I rambled all over the place on the subject. I think the new screen is a great idea, and I do like the idea of tying in flag facilities and command and control into Aurora more.