Special Purpose Ships

[Hardlec]

At the beginning of my campaign, I took ships as reparations.  At one point I had more foreign ships in my fleet than I had my own.  Then I just took the money.

BUT

I still have a significant number of slow battleships with big guns as part of my fleet.  I'd like them used as convoy escorts, but they seem to only show up in computer selected task forces. I do not select them for sea duty as part of "my" task forces.  (These ships have 17.5 knot speed; my battleships have a minimum of 20 knot speed.)
How can I "select" ships for convoy escort duty?

[HistoricalAccuracyMan]

If you have a taskforce already at sea, you can select it and then under the "role" tab, you can select "protect" and the ships in that task force will prioritize protecting your convoys, if there are any within their operational range. If you leave your ships in port (that's what I assume you mean when you said you "didn't select them for sea duty as part of 'my' task forces"), you only have 3 options: limited, in being and sea control. Limited is self explanatory, and is best used immediately after a war to cut maintenance costs of your fleet. In being again sees your maintenance costs cut (not as much), but they will only operate near their home port. Sea control doesn't prioritize offense or defense, just whatever engagements they find themselves in.

Long story short: if you want to use certain ships as convoy escorts, you have to put them to sea as part of a task force (or by their lonesome, whichever you prefer) and then set their "role" to the "protect" option to give them the best chance at protecting convoys. If you just leave them in port and have them set to "sea control," you probably won't see them as escorts very often.

[Hardlec]

This is the first time I've heard of a "role" tab.  I'll do that.

 

[kjg000]

On 9/3/2022 at 11:08 PM, Hardlec said:

At the beginning of my campaign, I took ships as reparations.  At one point I had more foreign ships in my fleet than I had my own.  Then I just took the money.

BUT

I still have a significant number of slow battleships with big guns as part of my fleet.  I'd like them used as convoy escorts, but they seem to only show up in computer selected task forces. I do not select them for sea duty as part of "my" task forces.  (These ships have 17.5 knot speed; my battleships have a minimum of 20 knot speed.)
How can I "select" ships for convoy escort duty?

This post of mine is a bit premature as we have not seen 1.09 yet, however I'd like to see some command pools set-up. I.e. convoy command, coastal defence etcetera. I think there is more than sufficient historical precedence to justify this. 

The idea would be to allocate some ships to these commands to be used as convoy escorts or whatever as appropriate to the command. 

[Hardlec]

Indeed, I should like to see more choices of "roles"
In addition to "in being" "sea control" "limited" "building" "refitting" and "repair"  I would like to add "convoy escort" "diplomatic envoy"  and "raider."  Roles like "Shore bombardment" or "invasion support" may not be needed for a while.

I still see my old, slow battleships being assigned by the computer to meeting my enemy's newest ships while my newer faster ships are on convoy escort.  Even when I assign task forces with the "graceful old ladies" to "protect" and my new, fast ships to "invade."

At the beginning of WWII, the US had the Arkansas, New York and Texas in the Atlantic.  They were obsolete or obsolescent, but did great service as convoy escorts, then later they pounded the Nazi's for the invasions of Africa, Sicily, Italy and Normandy.