For the vast majority of those participating in these exercises, they were unaware of their true purpose. For most crew or even ship captains, such knowledge was irrelevant and would merely serve to place greater risk to operational security. Among the Rothian navy, only the Admiral and a select few others were aware of their true objective on Psi-Helios. However, he was well-aware of these exercises’ importance in maintaining plausible deniability, so they needed to be taken seriously. For all intents and purposes, these exercises were exactly why they were here.

Being that the scenario would call for them to split into multiple teams, they had to decide how they would divide said teams according to the distribution of forces each navy had brought. The simplest would be to have each separate tackle an objective, but that would also accomplish very little. The purpose of these exercises was to test how they could coordinate with different military doctrines. They needed to make attempts to combine their forces to identify any conflicts or inefficiencies that could arise.

The plan that Admiral Matir had forwarded to the other fleets involved creating battle groups centered around “core” ships. The most capable individual vessels they had available would form the backbone of the battle groups’ formations and tactics. For the five objectives they needed to accomplish, the overall fleet would be divided into five groups. The Qalian-Vosh’s supercarrier, the Tindrel’s weaponized asteroid, and the Rothians’ heavy carrier would be core ships for three battle groups. Outremer did not have any ships that could serve as core ships for this exercise. Even the Barbarossa could not match the firepower of a specialized Rothian battleship, hence why the remaining two battle groups would each utilize a Rothian battleship as core ships. However, the advantage that Outremer had brought to the table related to the sheer size of their fleet relative to the others. Outremer’s navy was massive, and even for just an exercise, they had brought far more ships of cruiser-class and above with different specializations, along with numerous support ships. Given the significant variations in each navy’s doctrines, Outremer’s adaptability was key to this strategy. They needed to be able to round out each group’s strengths and weaknesses to ensure the enemy would not have any glaring flaws to exploit. Every battle group would contain vessels from every species, but the core ships would dictate the tactics for their respective objectives. 

Once sufficient time had been given for each fleet to review the proposal, Admiral Matir opened a channel to each fleet’s ranking officers. “The exercise shall be commencing in one standard hour. Requesting confirmation that all parties have reviewed and understood the operational orders for the exercise. I am also requesting any formal objections or tactical input be delivered prior to the start of the exercise.”