Terran Stellar Navy › Forums › (OOC) Division Development › ((OOC)) Fighter Squadron of the 2nd Fleet, 4th Light Division › Reply To: ((OOC)) Fighter Squadron of the 2nd Fleet, 4th Light Division
Thanks for the videos, Wade! This clarifies a lot. This brings the next question: range. How far (and how long) can we deploy a wing?
@Aramond, when I talk about screen coordination I mean the usage of armed allied (//NPC) ships. I see five main patterns of conduct that are bad here:
1. Scicomms people panic and dock them to a station. This is the proper course of action if you talk about unarmed ones, but it’s hugely wasteful when it comes to destroyers.
2. They are sent individually to counter a threat. NEVER do that unless you plan to be about one single sector away. They work better on packs, all of them ordered to defend one that you can call the lead ship, if you want. You only order around the lead ship. I’ll get back to why soon.
3. The lead ship doesn’t get new orders to engage periodically. You see, the only way to have a destroyer attack constantly is by ordering it to defend something (which is the main reason they all defend the lead). Otherwise, they just pull out. Slowly. Which opens their rear to enemy fire. So, every time you see a kill, you order the lead to attack again.
4. Someone receives from flag the authority to coordinate the screen, and flag doesn’t notify the senior scicomms officer who, until then, was supposed to do it. This used to happen a lot about two months ago, but this one I think has been largely corrected recently.
5. For some reason, captains don’t see a group of destroyers approaching a fleet or don’t trust them to do the job, even when they are positive it’s just a bunch of Kraliens. Therefore, all the time that took to send the screen to attack something ends up wasted as some random cruiser goes there guns (or worse, MINES) blazing in what was inteded to be someone else’s target.
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Which leads to the principles that are to be respected for proper screen coordination:
1. Don’t use it to defend fixed objects, like stations. Screening elements are slow and don’t have the opportunity to respond fast to threats. Use them aggressively, attacking enemy groups.
2. Avoid sending it against Arvonians, but it can take Kraliens and Torgoths just fine. Screening elements are too slow to persue Skaarans, though.
3. It is to be concentrated into groups before sending it into combat. Do it just as you know the inmediate threats of the mission/sim have been taken care of, and as soon as possible. Minimum of 3 in order to ensure safety, but larger groups are fine. The smaller the group, the more support it needs.
4. Support your screen. It needs love, it needs orders to engage, and it needs that, whenever you see a group approaching into combat range of an enemy fleet, you taunt it. Doesn’t matter if you’re in charge of the group or not, it’s fire being drawn away from it.
5. It needs a consistent command. It’s slow, y’know, so changing the strategic priorities means that its effectiveness is gonna suffer.
6. Don’t bother sending it against high-priority targets. It will mop up whatever you put in front of it, though, so use it against groups away from bases.
7. Don’t steal its kills. If you steal from a cruiser, that’s too bad, but she’ll move away like nothing. Your screen spent the last 5 minutes getting there. Respect that.
8. Avoid using your screen too close to your main division. More risk of kill-steals.