is ther anyone who uses "screen" ... ?

[GL.L3gi]

... or is it just a big pain for starting formations.

Its by far the formation which takes the most time to untangle to something useful. Having 10+ ships "screen" is sometimes an alt+f4 & reload moment...

Id say get rid of it.

[NT_Dave]

The "Screen" formation as executed in this game is inappropriate. It is designed primarily to protect the capital ships from submarine and air attack. The nearest comparison would be a scouting formation, which was commonly used from the 16th Century up to the invention of Radar. This would consist of a line of fast warships, usually in Line Abreast formation and whose function is to locate the enemy fleet. Several navies had specific classes of light cruisers designated "Scout Cruisers, for this function during the 1890s and early 20th Century.

Likewise, the confusing distribution of "screening" ships is completely unrealistic as it would prevent proper command control, especially prior to the common use of radio communications. Squadrons need to kept together!

[DoctorDanny]

My formations with screens allways turn into clusters of constantly colliding destroyers and light cruisers. The AI does manage to screen their capitals quite effectively though. So I suppose it's me messing with the ' avoid' buttons and steering a lot that messes it up.
On that note, the 'avoid torpedo' button is a great way to have your ships set a course for Argentine and never return to formation as it seems they react to every single ' known' torpedo from that point onwards even if it isn't a threat to them.

[Tomn]

The screen formation in and of itself is kind of pointless, but using screen DOES effectively put your light ships on AI control and they're mostly sorta OK about skirmishing with enemy light ships and keeping them away from your capitals while not leaving your capitals too isolated.

Mostly. As DoctorDanny says, once torpedoes are in the water all bets are off. Also in roughly the dreadnought era there's a bit of a problem where if your capitals are roughly 10 km off and turning in a battleline to keep the enemy centered and in range, your screens are close to the pivot point of your turning circle and they seem to interpret their orders to stay in formation as being "keep near where I'm assigned," which means they come to nearly a dead stop. Which, for light ships that depend on speed and manueverability to survive close to the enemy, is suicidal. It gets better in the superdreadnought era when your firing ranges are so wide the screens are still free to manuever, but it's pretty bad in the dreadnought era.

[sandman2575]

The "avoid ships" and "avoid torpedoes" are far too unpredictable to be useful. First thing I do in battle set up is untick 'avoid ships'. I never use it, and I only use 'avoid torpedoes' occasionally for small formations that I'm really not worried about micro-ing but also don't want to put on full AI.

That grinding 'collision noise' sound effect is seared into my head. I wish the ship pathfinding were not so terrible.

And a lot of trouble could be saved by giving players a deployment zone at start of battle. AI formation generation is also terrible and the first 15 seconds of battle are me just accelerating time x30 and watching the cluster**** of ships ramming into eachother as they get into the formations I want them to be in... Sigh.

[cyan027]

How about this??

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1069660/discussions/0/3774616115125693950/

[Lipi]

I of course do the whole thing manually. Screening and scouting both.

I have also noticed the AI does a generally good job of screening its heavier ships... DDs and CLs holding the flank line with their torpedo ranges. It means you can't get too close and will have to snipe the DDs and CLs first while the CAs and (maybe) the BBs will fire from a safer distance. They also use torpedo swarm tactics with piranha mentality, once they detect a big juicy ship is too flooded to keep its speed and maneuverability.

I'm liking the battle AI for the most part. Except when running away.

[Sword_of_Light]

Originally posted by Lipi:

I have also noticed the AI does a generally good job of screening its heavier ships... DDs and CLs holding the flank line with their torpedo ranges.

Although this also means that they act as ablative armor - there have been plenty of times I've sunk ?? in the opening volly simply because I was targeting a capital ship and a CL or DD was hugging it.

You're not wrong, but the AI needs to spread out a bit. Flank screens are usually well done, I often run into difficulty trying to sneak my DDs in for a kill only to run into an AI line of CL.

[Lipi]

Originally posted by Sword_of_Light:

Originally posted by Lipi:

I have also noticed the AI does a generally good job of screening its heavier ships... DDs and CLs holding the flank line with their torpedo ranges.

Although this also means that they act as ablative armor - there have been plenty of times I've sunk ?? in the opening volly simply because I was targeting a capital ship and a CL or DD was hugging it.

That's exactly what they're supposed to do... put themselves on the line while protecting the bigger and expensive capital ships. DDs are easy to replace, BBs will take forever to build afresh.

[Tomn]

Originally posted by Sword_of_Light:

Originally posted by Lipi:

I have also noticed the AI does a generally good job of screening its heavier ships... DDs and CLs holding the flank line with their torpedo ranges.

Although this also means that they act as ablative armor - there have been plenty of times I've sunk ?? in the opening volly simply because I was targeting a capital ship and a CL or DD was hugging it.

You're not wrong, but the AI needs to spread out a bit. Flank screens are usually well done, I often run into difficulty trying to sneak my DDs in for a kill only to run into an AI line of CL.

This isn't screening behavior, it's bad pathfinding - the screens are TRYING to form a circle around the formations, but for various reasons the AI ends up running into each other and once two ships are up alongside each other the AI seems incapable of disentangling them until and unless one of them changes speed enough to "shake off" the other.

[JaM]

i would suggest renaming the SCREEN formation into "Lets cause some colisions and chaoss" formation.. completely pointless...