Some more info for those who will be in this first-ever ship-to-ship slugfest.
I will create two opposing cruiser squadrons, consisting of four cruisers and eight DE's a piece. Each cruiser will be it's own fleet (with the flagship CA and two DE's), and will be independently controllable.
The German High Seas Fleet, 1st Scouting Division, will consist of C15+C17+C19+C21. These come from the west side of the terrain. Unless something is radically different off line vs. on line, I should be able to move all four of these TG's from the west of the Philippines to the east. I tried it out off-line and found you CAN move them west to east if you take them off the map to the north before bringing them back on to the east. The British Grand Fleet, Battle Cruiser Squadron 2, will consist of C23+C29+C31+C33. These are all on the east side of the terrain already.
What I will do before hand is to put all the TG's for each side into their own grid, with a rough line-astern formation, and within a couple hundred yards of each other. They will be set to cruise back and forth until frame
time, when everyone's in and ship CO's are assigned. I will then jump first one squadron then the other to within approximately 25 miles of each other. I'm just going to get all the fleets making up a squadron close to one another; it will be up to the ship CO's and their commodore to get them into formation at that point. Each side will also have a CV TG nearby, from which they can launch two to four scout planes in the first 2 minutes of the frame. The CV TG's will then be closed and jumped 100 miles away.
Once all fleets are in position, the CM's will kill off all but the flagship and two DE's from each of the fleets making up the squadrons, then open the fleets for PT spawning for about 5 minutes. At that point, the fights on. The two opposing forces will have to find each other, close, and go at it.
