You've never answered the question how does the patrol command help. You've thrown scenarios out, but you haven't connected the dots by showing how it helps in those scenarios. You've just assumed its obvious... and you should know to never assume! It makes... well, you should know the saying

Bah , you posted too quick

deliberately misquote people...

All phrases were from your post and conveied the meaning behind them ? Then its hardy a misquote.


You don't respond to my position or questions...

Your question is "How does that feature help?" , if i`m not mistaking ?

Please tell me then , how does "posting scenarios" as you put it which display a way in which that feature would be helpful is not answering your question ? You asked , i answered by providing example.

Reply

27 :

letting ur fleet in solar system patrol few jump zones

29 :

As for "patrol through multiple grav wells", you miss-understood me. I didnt mean patrol through many jumps, i said "jump zones" meaning areas where enemy ships appear after jumping in the system. Or have you never had a time when enemy fleets jump to your sun from diferent directions and you fleet stationed there just crawls from one side of a jump well to another never getting to needed point in time ? Hold position doesnt work too well there since they usualy dont end up in the same exact place and i also want my fleet to chase them.

31 :

Basicaly you take waypoints commands (as you can do now with the SHIFT+click) and allow them to loop indefinatly so ur fleet will continuosly move inside the grav well.

38 :

It would solve a need to micro a fleet in the solar grav-well every time an enemy fleet or 2 warps, at least for me. If i can get my fleet to patrol an arc of at least 90 degrees instead of sitting in place with Hold command or crawling all over when left unmanaged, i would be very very happy

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in other words for me that feature would be useful at managing your fleet movements inside gravity well of a sun, in a situation of multiple enemy fleets jumping in from diferent directions. At least thats the use i can see from playing so far, would there be any other uses for it ? who knows.

You truncated a part of the post (without the required adding "..." or [ ... ]!). That is the misquote I'm upset over, especially as it was an important part of it.

Also, you can't take something out of context, which is what you deliberately did. Context changes meaning and if you don't know that, you need help.



Because the scenarios posted don't display how its helpful in and of themselves! Obviously your seeing use, but you aren't explaining it so we aren't seeing how those scenarios showcase its usefulness!

but you aren't explaining it

ummm ...

About problem i encounter : "enemy fleets jump to your sun from diferent directions and your fleet stationed there just crawls from one side of a jump well to another never getting to needed point in time ? Hold position doesnt work too well there since they usualy dont end up in the same exact place" ie "managing your fleet movements inside gravity well of a sun, in a situation of multiple enemy fleets jumping in from diferent directions"

About solution available with Patrol command : "If i can get my fleet to patrol an arc of at least 90 degrees instead of sitting in place with Hold command or crawling all over when left unmanaged" ie i can separate fleet in sections with overlapping patrol zones (not completely just enough to provede fire but not get drawn too far from their main route) so they can intercept more than 1 jump-in zone. It would be a lot more effective than leaving ur fleet as the unmanaged mass of ships that will crawl all over after every ship the apears and get stuck on the sun border. It would also be more effective than leaving same groups on hold command in the different parts of the system(1. neighbours would help each other with fire 2.Those groups could chase after enemy at least a bit).

Am i missing something ?

If you want to say that if theres a major fleet battle you can always go and manage it manualy, while small stuff is not that important and can be taken care of even by unmanaged mass of ships. I`ll reply that i wouldnt want to micro every battle there is, and also there can be problems if you have to manage 2 or more battles at the same time. For example, while your main fleet fights in one of the enemy`s solar systems other enemies still send fleets to your own. Switching between those battles can be bothersome and annoying, so anything that can help and lessen microing or frantic jumping around is quite welcomed.

Just because your fleet moves around the gravity well doesn't mean they are any closer to the action. In fact, it probably means the opposite. The enemy will probably only be able to come from one, or maybe two, jump points. If you are moving around the gravity well, he could just scout you, wait till your across the well from him, and then launch his attack.

The part that you just did, explaining how that helped. You never mentioned splitting your fleet up, and quite frankly what you want would work better with existing features, but you finally gave us what we've been asking for, the connection between feature and scenario. It isn't a very good connection, but at least you have one.



OK, lets see if I understand what your saying: You have a fleet stationed around the star, and you don't want detachments of it running off all over the place after ships no where near them?

OK, so your solution (assuming I understand it) is to divide your fleet into multiple chunks, and each chunk would patrol a specific section of the star. Anything inside that section they'd attack, anything that leaves it they'd ignore and resume patrol.

Why not just use "local area" for that? You can't define specific areas of responsibility (which is what you appear to want) but the size of that (about 1/4 of the grav well) is perfectly reasonable and appropriate to what you want.

The part that you just did

Mmm, honestly i though that it was just logicaly flowing out of what i said, after all theres not that much options on what you can do within proposed problem with patrol command. Sorry if i was being an ass about the issue and not getting lack of info sooner.

Why not just use "local area" for that?

Well i never said it would be perfect solution to anything, just a lil bit of help, and yes i mainly want that missing control\ability to define where i want my ships.

What do you understand under "local area" mechanic, just to be clear ? It may work, but i`m having doubts that w/o something to return ships to their destination by force (ie the defined route they have to follow) they wouldnt scatter or be drawn after just a single ship to the far end of their control zone while main fleet slips past. This mechanic is suposed to work while you are away and unable to manage things yourself afterall.

Just because your fleet moves around the gravity well doesn't mean they are any closer to the action...If you are moving around the gravity well, he could just scout you, wait till your across the well from him, and then launch his attack.

It would depend on the rout you define for your fleet. You dotn have to send ur fleet to opposite end of the system when its not needed, just define small one.

enemy will probably only be able to come from one, or maybe two, jump points...

In the game that told me i missed patrol command enemy was jumping from 4 different stars and ending up in uper 180 arc of my Star grav-well in 4 different places, their fleets would then proceed to jump into 3 of my lanes. Entrances to those lanes were around 180,0 and 90 degrees on the same upper arc. Performance of my fleet trying to cacth all of them and running around ineffective got me thinking on how i could cope with that.

Local area means the ships won't go more than a set distance (1/4 or so) of the grav well from their "default" position to engage the enemy.

So you're basically asking to be able to gamble that maybe your fleet will be right on top of them, and maybe they will be on the other end of your 180 degree arc. A much more practical solution for this scenario would be to research level two psidar, and position your fleet when you see the enemy coming at you.

Requires him to be paying attention

or you build multiple small chase fleets to hunt your opponent down, or even MORE brilliantly you make multiple small chase fleets AND multiple attack fleets to take back offensive initiative!

won't go more than a set distance

Yup, what i thought. As i`ve said may or may not work, would need to compare in the field to see which one would work better. Having more control is preferable though.


So you're basically asking to be able to gamble that maybe your fleet will be right on top of them, and maybe they will be on the other end of your 180 degree arc

As i`ve said the rout would depend on you. If you want to make them realy long, then yes. I on the other hand would prefer smaller ones, their differnce from partol area would be force-pull of the rout.

position your fleet when you see the enemy coming at you...

As its been pointed out, patrol ismainly needed so you canattend to ther things and dont have to franticly rush every time theres enemy.


you build multiple small chase fleets to hunt your opponent down...

Defeats the pourpos of defending your sun`s grav-well and thus out of scope. Plus small fleets wont be able to do anything against begger forces.

the amount of fleets you can deploy depends on how many and what type of planets you have. if you split them too much you wont be able to do any damage anywhere.

would you care to elaborate of your difference between chase and attack fleet? I suspect the latter contains more siegs and missile frigs, but I would like to hear your thoughts on it.

edit: was it here the patrol thing was discussed? well if there was one, I would use it to have my scouts patrol the border enemy worlds. usually you have a handful planets where the enemy may come from and ordering scouts there and back and to then next to be somewhat up to date is tiresome. so an order to have my scouts always patrol (or scout if you want) a specified set of planets would be very useful to players like myself who tend to forget ordering them around and rebuilding them.

both of you are brilliantly wrong, small fleets can take down larger fleets if you micro and coallesce them properly

and my god, they are most certainly the *best* way to defend the sun, large steamroller battles will only make you lose terribly.

depends on the difference. if you have ten frigs and stand a full enemy fleet you WILL get wasted, no matter how good you micro. but then ... the trick is to avoid those larger fleets or to use your other fleets in the meantime to do much more damage simultaneously.

and if you are referring to being wrong, I didnt contest your statement I really pointed out there is a limit. god, 20 fleets with 5 frigs will do you no good, because there arent enough targets in most games and its way too much management time.

Obviously you haven't seen Multi use the Antorak.

*shudders*

But the Antorak isn't a frigate...

A fleet of 30 frigates is attacked from the rear by 5 frigates. The fleet then turns, giving the five frigates a few free shots, who move through the enemy as they turn, forcing them to turn again. You have a wonderful opportunity to hit them as they are turning from the other direction, and another opportunity to hit them from that opposing direction once they turn back. Three sets of five frigates would do substantial damage in such an instance, An equal force sent in such a manner would destroy them with insubstantial casualties by comparison. Turn rates are actually slow enough flanking is a real advantage. It's almost a real strategy game.

Those are all wonderful examples of microing the hell out of small unit group, but you missing the part where patrol command`s main usefulnes was about not microing the battle and beng somewhere else at the time. No one is suggesting that AI or script can do better than real-time human control.

The fact that the firing arc is larger then just the front of a friget makes so that the small amount of frigets would die still. And, this strategy would only work against a computer because a smart player would just divide his forces and have them face different directions until your frigets are dead.

I dont have much time now to really respond to things so for the moment this is my very short position on things:

I'm still on the fence about the epic sense of the game right now. I dont feel a "connection" to my civilization at this point and that is where I think it is failing to suck me into the epic feeling of a long game. I'm also kind of cold on the tech tree at the moment as well. It is way to short for my taste and sense of epic progression as well.

When you see the new Diplomacy system, Tech Trees, UI tweaks and other goodies, you'll appreciate the 4X immersiveness that I feel you are looking for

new tech treeS ?

if you ever make a bad game you will always be welcome as master of a torture pit in some dictatorships, I'm sure . too cruel *droolsovernewfeatures*

Bitchin' I cant wait. Thanks for the info Craig! I hope we can get a hands-on preview before things go gold so to speak.