I have this aching desire, recurring at the start of most HDS scenarios, to be able to set initial formations. I feel I should be able to rearrange my battlegroup, main body, ASW pickets, etc. freely at 0 time, under 0 time.
In the real World the commander sets the formation soon after the BG leaves port. In the game I'm promoted to commander on the spot, just few minutes before the battle start. Ok, this happens, but not all the time.
What aggravates this (for me) is that

• the previous commander has very different idea about ASW formations (if he had any at all )
• I have only minimal control over the station keep speed of my ships. Either I stop the group and wait until ships creep, 5kts, to station, or I start the group and let the captains fool around at flank speed.
  One painfully eats into the game time limit, the other is a Russian-roulette if opfor subs are around.
• We also have the main body station keep problem, there is a good chance that main body ships, once I change the initial formation, converge on a single spot. (After reaching their stations.) Even if you spend time on formation setup you don't get results.

My ideal ASW formation for CVBG transit. (Edited: for the IOPG battleset, Indian Ocean specific sonar characteristic, like limited range, virtually no CZ detections, etc.)

• Fixed wing ASW patrols 40-55nm out. Any further out or wider patrol ring leads to a too scattered sonobuoy pattern, subs slip by too easily. The more assets I've the more sectors I patrol left/right from the PIM.
• Heli ASW patrols 30-40nm. The advantage of helicopters is that these exhaust their endurance and sonobuoy assortment roughly the some time. An S-3 patrols for hours after it has laid all of it's buoys. The helis provide safety in the gap while the S-3 has only MAD to work with.
• Towed array ASW picket 20-30nm out from the HVU. Perry or Spruance. The Spruance is best paired with an AAW cruiser or at least a CF Adams to protect it from pop-up missile attacks.
  I use the AAW ring or the main body for the picket. Avoid the ASW ring, my sprint-drifting pickets have never detected anything but torpedoes. And I don't want to detect a Type-65 any more.
• The HVU ideally escorted by a VLS Tico sporting a towed array.

Ok, I'm not gonna get the free formation feature in the GE anytime soon, slightly better outlook for an ExportDLL, who knows. But for the resolute there was always the option of modifying the Battleset scenario with the SE, set formation and play it as User scenario.
This was as far as I got, theory, until I came by HDSC 10.0.
Clash of the Titans, yum.
There is a beautiful blue CVBG, all-mighty airwing, Spruances, Ticos and the Long Beach too, muahhahhaaaaaa ... except the formation is all over the Arab sea, 120nm E-W 100nm N-S!! I will have order here!
Come SE, the only hard part is to open the scen and find AAC group without blowing away the red positions.



Great.
The added benefit, that the positions set in the SE the ships (all of them in the main body) keep without a flinch!
The modified scenario file is attached below.

CVGB in full ASW sweep.

HDSC10.zip

As a scenario author, I like to have complete control of how the player starts to suffe ... er, play .. through the scenario I have written.

Sounds like you have a cruel streak we never knew about Brad.

 

Adds to the fun if you ask me.

Knowing I suffer for a purpose, even if it's malicious , would make it much better.

And just a sentence in the scenario background, even a wink like "the BG has scattered to avoid migrating whales" turns recovering the formation from nuisance to mission.

But few times the formation looks just random, like after setting starting points, alternate routes, missions, speed, patrols, ordinances, writing orders, red and blue, etc., etc. the designer just clicked ships into the main body and did not zoom in to tidy up. This gives me the itch ... to tidy up.

 

Then there is HDSC 10.0, kind of unique, the formation here is obviously set piece,

but there is no apparent tactical advantage this arrangement provides,

or any way a reasonable naval formation can evolve into this, whatever whale migration.

 

No inner screen for the carriers, even the closest Tico is too far away to protect from ASMs,

AOR ships in picket position, looks nice though.

I'm giving my age away here, but the concern for whales is after my time. If the Midway battle group ever took whales into consideration, I sure never heard about it.

 

Getting the formation together and set up the way it needed to be is an age old hassle in my experience, and something that never went away. Wasn't there always a unit or two who couldn't get their comms working? Or the inevitable confusion over details that were supposedly worked out at the pre-sail conference, but never were? I don't think I can recall a single evolution where our old pal Murphy didn't show up and enforce his law.

 

Keep it real in the scenarios guys. It only adds to the fun.