How to program Mine and Sat layers

[Fyron]

Sounds like Wiki material!

[Xrati]

You do not have to worry about ending the turn on the point of mine laying. As long as you don't try to lay two sets of mines within one turn you will be fine giving repeat orders to the laying point and return to planet to load.

[Slick]

Yeah, these ships on "Repeat Orders" must be checked on from time to time. They occasionally get stuck for no reason. They also have troubles when cargo transfers don't go right (either side full/empty and trying to fill/empty even more). I'm pretty sure they forget their orders if attacked. The pathing routine will always choose the shortest path so opening/closing warp points in their path will affect them and could make their orders impossible. They also will fail when the sector limits are reached.

[Possum]

Slick said:
Yeah, these ships on "Repeat Orders" must be checked on from time to time. They occasionally get stuck for no reason. They also have troubles when cargo transfers don't go right (either side full/empty and trying to fill/empty even more). I'm pretty sure they forget their orders if attacked. The pathing routine will always choose the shortest path so opening/closing warp points in their path will affect them and could make their orders impossible. They also will fail when the sector limits are reached.

You know, Slick, I've been using this technique in SE4 Classic for years now, and I've never had a ship get "stuck" mysteriously. Perhaps this was a bug in Gold?

[Urendi Maleldil]

As far as I know the ship won't get stuck unless it becomes damaged, or runs out of supply. You can keep the sats flowing when an enemy enters the system by changing the clear orders on enemy encounter (I forget the name) option in the Empire Options screen.

[bearclaw]

I think what Slick is refering to is if a ship has orders to load and there isn't any of that type, then it clears its orders. At least, it use to. It doesnt' do that anymore but I can't remember if that changed from Classic to Gold or if it was a patch somewhere in Gold.

I'm hoping that SEV will allow you to specify how many units can be remotely launched instead of all or nothing.

[Slick]

Yeah, I have found that the chances of them getting "lost in space" (pun intended) increases with the complexity, or maybe the number of the orders in the repeat list. I've tried some rather involved sets of orders and there appears to just be a stupid factor (Ks) that suddenly kicks in for no apparent reason sometimes.