Trouble with a convoy
 

I'm building a multiplayer mission where the good guys are holding a naval blockade. In the beginning of the scenario, a gaping hole gets punched into the blockade and our good guys in their subs are called in to close the gap. What I have going on is a couple warships come in to clear the way followed about 20 minutes later by a convoy of merchant ships with a militiary escort. The Convoy is the target that needs to be sunk.

I have this set up in two formations, the warships clearing the way are in one formation and the convoy is the seccond formation.

My problem is, if a torpedo or any ordinance is fired even long before the convoy gets to the restricted waters, the convoy freaks. They plot courses in all directions and it seems as if Bernard is organising the retreat because they all turn random directions, not trying to avoid each other at all and they end up playing all ahead flank bumper cars, sinking several ships from the collisions. This seems to happen no matter how far apart I put the ships and is not the behavior I want from them. (I want them to punch through like a precise military operation should be with the escorts acting as defence.) Any suggestions how to make this work ?

I don't think the directions they turn are random. They're evasion courses, controlled by the doctrine and fed data about the incoming weapons.

There is unfortunately no easy solution. To the greatest extent possible, you should spread out the ships. The further apart they start, the less of a chance for a collision. Apart from that, you may need to experiment with different formation shapes. Try running your scenario a few times, attacking from directions where attacks in-game are likely to come from and see which ships pile up, and how. Use that to change their position a little bit and see how it changes things.

In my experience, the worst position for ships is side by side. If you have to have them in close, stagger them laterally to give them all turning room. Another common problem is when the ships rejoin formation. If the ships are in a front-to back line, one ship may try to move through another to get in position. You can solve this by a linear offset, or by making sure the ships in the lead of the formation are also the fastest (and will arrive back on-station the quickest).

I've had far more success in ASW-Screen formations than I have with any sort of tight merchant convoy.

Collisions can be avoided by creating a trigger that is always true, something like

"If Platform Exists <ship that is always there> Then..."

Then having the trigger run a script that turns collision avoidence on. I've found that collision avoidence can be a problem for DW, particularly for ships in formation. It's not just evasion either. Sometimes one will turn to avoid a fishing boat and end up smacking into something else. The collision avoidence script seems to help a lot, though.

Might as well go with an automatic trigger, then.

You could made the convoy neutral till it reaches a certain point, or use a time tricker to change sites?