Processing Orders for Attached Transport Groups
In PATE, it is common for large groups of ships to sail together with
identical orders. Instead of requiring players to submit the same order
for each ship in such a group, ships may be attached to a leading ship.
Orders send to the leading ship are copied to all the other ships
attached to that ship, so that the orders only need to be submitted
once. Attachment has no other effect
on the game. It is solely a method of copying orders from one ship to
another.
When transport groups are sailing together, however, they often need to
send different orders because they are loading or unloading different
units. Therefore, when a transport is attached to a leading ship,
orders for loading units and supplies (the ones on the "Transports
Only" line of the orders form) are not copied from the attached ship to
the transport. Thus, you can send only these orders for each transport,
then having the lead ships' other orders copied to the transport,
rather than have to submit them for each transport.
Example: SP1TR is carrying SP3IN, SP2TR is carrying SP1MC and 30
supplies, and both are attached to SP1SL. The commander sends orders
for a change of base, no movement, Accept contact option, and load 10
stores for SP1SL. These orders will be copied to SP1TR and SP2TR. Then
the commander only need to send unloading orders for SP1TR and SP2TR.
The rest of the order form can be left blank for those ships.