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Had several capital ships just get sunk in a PBEM because they did not autodisband. They were all one hex away in Moulmein, on surface combat, mission speed, retirement allowed, destination hex was the same as the homeport (Rangoon), and the TF was set on autodisband to a level 6 port (Rangoon).

I was hoping to avoid the naval attack that I knew was coming. After the turn resolution two of 12 ships ships were docked in port with massive damage. All the rest had been sunk (CLs).

When does autodisband take place in the turn sequence? If it's during the movement phase, why didn't my ships disband as intended? Any help is appreciated, I want to avoid such a disaster in the future.

As far as I'm aware Disbanding of TFs takes place near the very end of the turn - after land combat, when all the admin tasks take place.

AFAIK you've done everything right, and they should have disbanded. I lost a couple of cruisers on several occassion because they didn't auto-disbanding, so I just came to the conclusion that the feature is very unreliable.

As already mentioned above auto-disband takes place at the of a turn, all TFs set on auto-disband may be subject to air attack during the air phases, so basically you cant use this "feature" to save ships from (naval) air attack.

ORIGINAL: Tallyho!

As far as I'm aware Disbanding of TFs takes place near the very end of the turn - after land combat, when all the admin tasks take place.

I didn't know that. If that's the case the ships have probably spent all ops points on AA, so they didn't have enough left to auto-disband.

My guess is you didnt turn off refueling. If you turn that off, it SHOULD autodisband when it arrives. If you dont, it will wait until end of turn to re-fuel and re-arm the ships before putting them to bed.

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

My guess is you didnt turn off refueling. If you turn that off, it SHOULD autodisband when it arrives. If you dont, it will wait until end of turn to re-fuel and re-arm the ships before putting them to bed.

Now that COULD very well be the case - although it didn't work reliably for me in vers 1.801(?). i still had my ships sunk by aircraft before they could disband even without refueling.

But, you might want to fool around with it - maybe it works differently under 1.806.

ORIGINAL: Tallyho!

As far as I'm aware Disbanding of TFs takes place near the very end of the turn - after land combat, when all the admin tasks take place.

You are right! I already lost the Repulse in one game, because of exactly this fact!

FWIW, I had "do not refuel" set because I was fearful the ships would get snagged up. 

ORIGINAL: Cathartes

FWIW, I had "do not refuel" set because I was fearful the ships would get snagged up. 

OK - then it looks like my original analysis (see Support Forum) is correct - the disbanding takes place at the very end of the turn... at least usually. Maybe some players have had other experiences, but this is what i've seen.

BTW - under 1.806, i notice ships are NOT refueling on autodisband (at least in CHS - but the game engine is the same, so that shouldn't make a difference.)

As I thought, and Robert confirmed (thankfully), disbanding occurs as the LAST action of a turn.
I just ran a couple of wipt001 combat replays and noticed the very last line of text
"DISBANDING HUMAN CONTROLLED TASK FORCES"
This seems to only appear if any TFs are set to auto-disband, otherwise the last message displayed is the usual "Searching for adjacent enemy units".
IRL we wouldn't wait 24 hours to disband but this seems to be what the game does for us [:(]

The usefulness of this feature kicks in mainly in multi-turn games.

EDIT: Make that multi-day turns...[:D]