How Does Combat Doctrine Work?

[GrayArcher]

Hello,

I'm in a one turn per day game with three players in different time zones and some battles are lasting almost a week. I want to try Combat Doctrine to speed things up, but I want to make certain I don't make a huge mistake.

When an empire gets into a battle, is Combat Doctrine off by default, or if you used it the previous battle is it still on? (and thus, I may not have a chance to modify the doctrine or turn it off entirely before it starts attacking with my ships.)

What exactly are the "fight till" options? I'm guessing that:
Death means all the ships keep fighting until one side is gone.
Ship damaged means once a ship in a group is damaged something retreats (does one ship split from the group, or does the whole group retreat?)
Ship lost means that once a group loses a ship, the group retreats. (Or does my whole fleet try to retreat?)
Retreat means that all ships retreat at earliest opportunity.
Am I correct?

When it's ship screening time, am I able to modify the doctrine (including on or off), or just choose ships to screen?

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to speeding up the game.

[FroggerWimsey]

Hi,

I sometimes use combat doctrines, and I've never had it turn on automatically in a new battle after using it in a previous battle.

Fight till death does keep your ships fighting until they've been killed or are victorious. I only use that setting if the battle is clearly over (except for clean-up rounds) and I'm either (A) not in much danger of losing ships, or (B) have hopelessly lost the battle and can't retreat. Example: 3 battleships (fully upgraded&undamaged) attacking 4-6 shipyards. Whichever side of the battle I'm on, this one is over as soon as it starts (BBs attacking with 70% and priority firing vs SYs with 10%). If it was only 3 or fewer SYs I'd just attack without doctrine and see if I could destroy them all without setting doctrines up, but after the first firing round if any were left I'd likely set up a combat doctrine to move the game along as quickly as possible.

Fight till damage means until one of your ships are damaged.
Fight till lost means one of your ships are destroyed. I don't think I've ever used that setting, so not 100% sure.
Fight till retreat ... I think this means until you have the option of retreat for one of your ships, but not sure. I haven't used this option.

You can select whether or not to skip the screening stage. I will often use either the 'don't skip' (which stops the doctrine at that point), or 'skip if no damage'.