Rambo Mode ?!?!

[BathTubAdmiral]

Really, the behaviour I just see in battle leaves me ... baffled.

My fleet was slowly (11kn) backing away from the contacts after my flagship got hit in the water intakes and 1/2 the machinery was disabled ... didn't want to get overtaken etc.

At first, everything went (mostly) well.

Then, cruiser div 14 ("independant", AI controlled, Rear admiral's mode) turned around, passed my flagship and headed full speed at the last known contact.

Another div and its support started to follow ...

The cruiser div 14 went north until they sighted an old russian CA, which they started to pummel - quite successfully, I must say.

Soon it was dead in the water, and the cruiser div 14 swayed back and forth, taking pot shots at the burning ship and seemingly pondering to go back to the flagship.

Von der Tann, though, "accidently" (?) "lost contact" (that was the message) with her squadron. I wonder how that works, being the 3rd of 4 ships in a line, less then 500 yards apart.

When the div turned away from the target, Von der Tann rushed in as if conducting a torpedo attack - but she has no torpedoes!

She proceeded to unload several salvos from all guns at point blank range into the hapless russian CA.

Meanwhile, I desperatly tried to get the div under control, because running 4 CAs head-on into the whole russian fleet can't end well.
Setting them to "lead formation Battle Div"/"core" seemingly did the trick - they magically sensed the order change (>10ky away, vis 6300y) and turned around.

[BathTubAdmiral]

Von der Tann, though, went "Oh, leeeeeeet's see" (meandered about a bit) ... "Nope!!  Need moah killz!!!" 

And off she went, full speed in the direction where the russian fleet was last seen ...

... looks like "last seen" is something I'd say about her very soon as well ...

What is this?

Is this somehow intended behaviour, result of some orders/command structure thingy I messed up?

Or is it just because she somehow lost contact while being right next her div leader and 2 sister ships, and never regaining contact for ca. 10min. despite being right between the div and the target the div was shooting at?

Losing ships this way is really, really annoying and frustrating.

Attachments:

Game2-Rambo Mode.7z (241.18 KB)

[seriousstrategygamer]

It looks to me as if the small circles are the vision range, which would indicate a night or low-vis engagement. In these circumstances I would expect a great deal of confusion, as happened historically.

On a further in-game mode, I would expect that the "independent" setting would lead to, well, a lot of behaviour based on indivudal assessments, as opposed to coordinated group action. You are much better of with the "Core" command if you want to keep your ships together.