Finding a use for Formation Orders as-Programmed

[Exultant (OP)]

Help me determine if this is a bug or if it is working as intended, and if intended, how I might make effective use of it:

In the Naval Organization window, fleets have a "Formation Orders" tab, which on the surface appears to be for setting up escort craft to maintain a certain distance and bearing from a parent fleet.

After some testing, due to the behavior of escorting fleets, I cannot find an effective use case for this setting.

Escorts must be in their own fleet. You assign an 'anchor fleet' to the escorting fleet, and a distance and bearing. Bearing is relative to the toggles of Specific Threat, Nearest Hostile Warship/Contact, or Anchor Fleet destination, with priority given to higher ones on the list.

For example, if distance is set to 1mkm, bearing is set to 0, and Nearest Hostile Contact and Use Anchor Destination are both set to yes, the escorting fleet will attempt to position itself 1mkm out from the anchor fleet first in the direction of the nearest hostile contact then, if no hostile contacts are known, 1mkm out toward the anchor fleets current movement destination.

The problem is that if the parent fleet is not moving, and a hostile bearing target isn't visible, the escorts return to 0 distance from the anchor fleet.

This means, if you want to have sensor escorts that form a ring of detection around your main fleet, it will only work if you already see hostile craft. If you are searching for them and not moving (such as using a carrier group that doesn't want to close on potential targets) , the escorts will stay at distance 0. It's fine for using small detection craft when moving your main fleet, but once you have your fleet where you want them, you have no ability to maintain the escort.

What I would like to see for this to be useful is the following behavior:

1.) When none of the toggles are set to Yes, Desired Bearing Offset is relative to cardinal directions on the tactical map. For example, if I have 4 escorts set to 0, 90, 180 and 270 bearing offset, I'll have escorts at the four cardinal directions, where 'up' is 'north' on the map. This can be with 0 degrees being 'north' or 'east', I don't have any specific preference here.

2.) When none of the toggled options are true, or no options are toggled, escorting fleets maintain their desired distance. Thus, stationary anchor fleets who do not currently see hostile targets are capable of maintaining their escorts' positions.

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I have discovered a workaround to achieve my requested behavior: Setting a Deep Space Population (DSP) on the tactical map allows the anchor fleet to issue a "follow" command centered on the DSP, which is immobile and thus the escorts will maintain their set distance if they have "Use Anchor Fleet Destination" toggled to Yes. Aurora will consider Bearing 0 to be due-east.

This is a crude workaround as it creates empty populations that need to be cleaned up after engagements.

[lumporr]

Help me determine if this is a bug or if it is working as intended, and if intended, how I might make effective use of it:

 ...

This is a crude workaround as it creates empty populations that need to be cleaned up after engagements.

Well, if you're not moving, why would you need to be in formation? Why not just move the scout ships to where you want them and toggle off anchor fleet until you're underway again? If you want to have them be in a certain direction from the carrier, you can use waypoints to direct them and then use the move-to with a minimum distance from the carrier (or just use the waypoints themselves and estimate with shift-click or something). I find mobile scouting with an arrowhead formation very useful, and lately I've also been using formations to position my carrier well behind the battle fleet (using the battle fleet as an anchor for the carrier and setting bearing to 180 degrees, so I can issue commands to the battle fleet and have the carrier follow along). Furthermore, I think formations will be more useful in the incoming patch - perhaps having your escorts some 20kkm in front puts them in range of hostile laser warheads, for instance.

EDIT: What if you just turned off anchor fleet when the anchor fleet arrived at its destination? Do the escorts stay in place?

[Exultant (OP)]

Well, if you're not moving, why would you need to be in formation? Why not just move the scout ships to where you want them and toggle off anchor fleet until you're underway again?

I'm sorry, that really just rings of "Why not ignore the feature and just micromanage everything". I'm trying to set up a situation where I can keep my main fleet running dark, so I can lob fighters and missiles from long range without being detected. I am also taking advantage of Steve's changes to sensors in C#, which favor smaller sensors rather than larger ones.


If I have a set bearing and range for escort craft, then I want to have a picket ring a certain distance away. Why should that matter whether or not I'm moving? When I am stationary, I don't want to have to manually set 8-10 waypoints for each escort fleet, assign a move order for them to go there, then later on go back and delete them when I'm ready to move again.

It also prohibits taking advantage of the fact that formations will auto respond to a higher priority target when they have an anchor fleet set. For example, if I want my escort fleet with an active sensor to automatically position itself between my missile destroyers and a known target as soon as it appears on my passives, I have to have the fleets already in anchor mode. Using your method of manual waypoints, that further increases the micromanagement of setting the waypoints, than idling at set waypoints until hostiles appear, then manually delete waypoints and toggle on anchor modes again.

[nuclearslurpee]

The problem is that if the parent fleet is not moving, and a hostile bearing target isn't visible, the escorts return to 0 distance from the anchor fleet.

I would honestly consider this a bug and hope that Steve will fix it. This is also a hindrance if you want to use survey carriers and parasites, since if you assign the carrier as the anchor fleet for survey parasites, they will fly back to the carrier instead of continuing the survey. Frankly, escorts in formation around a stationary anchor point should have no reason to change position by default.

Well, if you're not moving, why would you need to be in formation? Why not just move the scout ships to where you want them and toggle off anchor fleet until you're underway again? If you want to have them be in a certain direction from the carrier, you can use waypoints to direct them and then use the move-to with a minimum distance from the carrier (or just use the waypoints themselves and estimate with shift-click or something).

I agree with OP's counter-argument that "ignore the feature and micromanage" is a poor rejoinder. However, even so, what you suggest is not actually really doable as we do not have any other tools for setting up these kinds of formations even manually. Waypoints can come close, this is true, but if for example I want to set up a sensor net around my fleet I have no way to tell each sensor vessel to fly to a position X distance away at Y bearing (the Follow order does not allow for a specified bearing AFAIK). Even with waypoints there is no way to set exact relative positioning outside of the formation/escorts system, so there will inevitably be gaps in the network due to human error in positioning with any other way.