Do ships in formation actually do anything?

[JCR]

In Harpoon, you could assign patrol (ASW, AAW, ASuW) zones in a formation, in Command there's only a station.
After designing a few scens I'm somewhat disappointed with formations, as all the ships ever seem to do (apart from AAW) is keep station.
If you assign a formation to a shore bombardement mission, they will merrily plod along until they are in range and don't even shoot back at the enemy warships within their formation
Also it doesn't seem to be possible to get a ship within a formation to independently attack a sub or any other target, except if it can engage it without leaving its station.

What am I doing wrong? or is that just a limitation of Command?

[Dannyp19]

Ive wondered the same thing especially with ASW ships. I dont see them sprint/drifting in the formation. Even with a towed array it should still sprint/drift, am I right?

[mikmykWS]

The formation editor is strictly for ship station keeping and there is no sprint or drift logic programmed in.It is something we would like to add at one point though. As far as ships doing other things within a formation you can instead use the mission editor and create missions that have reference points that move along with the group or unit you set them to be relative to.(set them to relative to a fixed or rotating bearing ).

[SSN754planker]

sprint drift is something I would love to see implemented somewhere down the line.

But doing everything with reference points clutters the map up. I would love to see a keyboard toggle to turn reference points on/off on the map.

[mikmykWS]

Got it. Request to hide reference points updated.

Mike

[thewood1]

Does sprint and drift exist when using missions? I never noticed.

[El Savior]

Good to know this. I was making scenario with task force and wondered will my pickets actually search subs. Now after making ref points and patrol area thing are working as planned. I vote for hide ref point function too. Would be great to hide task force ref points if necessary.

[JCR]

I think my main problem is that it seems ships are not defending against surface threats if not assigned to a ASuW mission.

[thewood1]

The one piece of advice I am looking for is how to keep patrols inside moving patrol boxes for ships. Every ship I assign as an ASW patrol to protect a HV ship ends up falling way behind the formation and never gets back to its patrol zone.

[JCR]

I think the best thing is to dispense with formations totally and assign moving reference points to ships

[SSN754planker]

This could work, but wouldn't be good to use until they come up with a way to hide reference points. (which I have suggested and hope is in the pipeline, MikMyk has noted it)

[thewood1]

I don't use formations, only reference points. But my ships still fall way out of the patrol boxes when the box is aligned to another unit.

[mikmykWS]

Hi guys,

We'll look at the defensive behaviors of units assigned to ASW missions. I've logged it as major to be looked at.

If you guys are having bad issues with formations capture a quick save and report it. We'll take a look. There are many reasons why these behaviors could happen and a save for us is the best way to help nail down what's going wrong.

[thewood1]

How about just a few tips on keeping these from happening.

[Stevechase]

ORIGINAL: mikmyk

Got it. Request to hide reference points updated.

Mike

Can we do this also for Nav/exclusion zones

[Rudd]

How about just a few tips on keeping these from happening.

The speed checkbox has to be unchecked, all units in formation have to be "auto", they(the individual units) will speed up or slow down and change course to get to their station(set on relative bearing) and they will maintain it.

[Rudd]

As far as the ASW thing goes, I assign helos(patrol mission) 30nm in front of the formation to handle this, maybe a couple ready for an Air Intercept-sub contact mission. If your ships in the formation detect a sub, you are already in trouble. Don't get me wrong, I place the ship with the best passive sonar suite in front about 15-20nm, but like I said, if a ship detects a sub, the sub is already too close, probably already has a fix on you and probably in range to fire.

[mikmykWS]

ORIGINAL: Stevechase

ORIGINAL: mikmyk

Got it. Request to hide reference points updated.

Mike

Can we do this also for Nav/exclusion zones

Why would you want us to hide these?