How do ship commands excatly work?

Do you mean like Sentry guard, attack and such?

Most of that I have found isn't all that usefull.

Sentry it ends up waking up nearly every turn anyway, for example.

I'd like to know if there is one for Auto-Attack. I seem to need that one a lot.

~SDC~

There is an auto attack, but mine doesn't seem to do anything.

B

Auto Attack will attack all enemy vessels within scanning range. If you aren't at war with anyone, it won't do anything. And if there are no enemy vessels within range, it won't do anything, either.

I use this command extensively when I go to war, since I prefer to have all my ships go and fight while I keep my focus on production and protecting certain areas. I just let my Death Knights do their own thing!
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Yep. Nothing quite compares to unleashing two dozen Excaliburs with auto-attack on those unsuspecting Altarians.

TWO DOZEN EXCALIBURS!!!!!! The most I ever had were 3 excaliburs, wiat a minute, are you related to the Drengins??? Autoattack is good when your ships are in range, otherwise it will miss a lot of ships in closer areas.

Hi Miika, if you are looking for a good empire to join, come and visit us at our website, and if you decide to post mods that is the place to go.

http://www.cdgroup.org/forums/tbs/gc/ or our team link at http://www.galciv.com/metaverse/empires.asp?id=264

Good luck and good hunt. Kaplax!!!!

A ship placed on sentry will "wake up" when any foriegn ship comes within range. A ship placed on GAURD will only wake up if an "enemy" ship comes within range. If you want a ship to stay put and shut up, gaurd is a much better solution.

Hi Wiley,

can you please explain what you exactly mean with "wake up".

Reading your reply, I understand that a ship on GUARD guards _a location_ within the ship¨s sensor range, not a friendly ship (a freighter for example) or a Star Base?

On AUTO-RETREAT, what does the ship do? Where does it retreat to? Does it retreat on any enemy ship within sensor range? Does the enemy ship type matter? Does my ship wait until it is being attacked before setting for retreat?

And most of all, are these commands really that helpful?

Thanks,
miika

Miika,
Gaurd in Gal Civ does NOT work like Gaurd in StarCraft or something similar. In those cases you tell it to gaurd a specific unit and it will follow that unit and attack whatever attacks the guarded. In gal civ, setting a unit to Gaurd is equivalent to saying "okay, stay here until an enemy ship comes within sensor range". Heres how this works:

You move your ship Hero to a particular position and set him to gaurd. Hero automatically forfiets any moves he had left that turn. Ie. his moves go from say 3/5 to 0/5. At this point, Hero essentially "goes to sleep" in that he will not move or be findable via the FIND button. He will just sit there. He will be OUT of you normal circulation of ships that need to be moved each turn. However, as soon as an enemy ship comes within sensor range, Hero will immediately pop out of Gaurd mode and be classified as a "ship with moves left". If you hit find enough times, the focus will eventualy be set to him. Its like he suddenly "wakes up" and says "hey, thers a bad guy over here".

What determines an "enemy" ship I havent paid much attention to. It might be only the ships of a race your at war with or anyone whose relation to you is hostile or at war.

To try it out, just put a ship in a region of space that gets a lot of alien travel and hit gaurd. You will see what I mean. I mainly just use it when I dont want to have to mess with a ship for a while.

Auto-attack can be quite useful but you need to watch and make sure that all your ships arent chasing down the same transport. Auto-survey is a must for your survey ships once a decent portion of the galaxy has been explored. Havent tried auto-retreat or sector-scan.


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Sector scan makes it fly around the perimeter of whatever sector its in and auto-retreat makes the ship run to the nearest planet when is significantly damaged.

Sector scan is pretty much useless. A ship will go round and round in the same sector, round and round, round and round.

I was hoping for a hotkey for Auto-Attack. Sentry has one, and who uses that? Mainly, when my ships destroy ships in orbit, it stops ... and then I have to double click on it, click done and it will continue. Irritating.
~SDC~
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It's not useless to me. I use it as a kind of limited patrol.