Emergency Propulsion in simultaneous turn games

[Ed Kolis]

Does Emergency Propulsion even work in simultaneous turn games? I thought you had to give orders to expend all your movement, then give the "use component" order, then give more move orders (in my case a colonize order) but it didn't work...

[Alneyan]

It worked fine last time I used it (that was in 1.91). The ships must be out of a fleet, as you know, but you can give the Use order at the beginning of the order list. Your vessel will then pick up extra move points, and will travel farther over the course of the turn.

I've never tried to give the Use component order in the middle of my order, so perhaps that's why it didn't work for you? The game might consider that you aren't going to move anywhere else once you reach 0 movement.

[douglas]

Of course it's not going to work if you expend all your movement first - you can only move once per day, and when it's activated on day 30 when all your normal movement is finished there's no time left to use the emergency movement.

Here's how emergency movement works:
Look up the movement days for the ship's normal movement speed in the FAQ. Find the day on which the "use component" order will be executed (either the first day you would normally move or on the same day as the last normal move before activating it). Every day on the chart after that that you would normally not move on gets an emergency movement point until they are all exhausted.

Example:
Ship has speed 10 and emergency movement 5.
Normal movement is on days 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29.
You order to move two sectors, use the component, and move some more.
The second move will be finished on day 5. The component will be used then.
Emergency movement will occur on days 6, 7, 9, 10, and 12.
Your ship will move a total of 15 times on days 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, and 29.

Note that in the case of the component being used before any movement at all, it will still not be used until the first normal move. The ship in the example cannot move before day 2 no matter what it does. Yes, this means putting emergency propulsion on speed 1 ships is useless because it will never under any circumstances be used until day 30, at which point there aren't any days left for the movement to be used on.

[Ed Kolis]

Oh! I thought it would only work if my "moves left" counter was less than my "total moves per turn" counter (because otherwise the extra movement would just be "topping me off" above the max) - that's why I used up all my movement before using the component!

[douglas]

That might be how it works in sequential movement, I'm not sure. Simultaneous is coded very differently for movement.

[Fyron]

You should put this in the SEWiki.

[PvK]

Yes:

The way to use Emergency Propulsion in Simultaneous Movement games is opposite from the way to use it in Turn-Based games.

With Turn-Based movement, a ship uses its normal movement points, and then uses Emergency Propulsion to get more movement points, and then moves again.

With Simultaneous movement, a ship should use emergency propulsion at the point during the turn that it wants to experience a jump to maximum speed (one sector per day of the month). Used at the beginning of the turn, the ship will travel at one sector per day even on days it would not normally move due to its basic speed, until it has used all of its emergency propulsion points. As long as there is enough time before the end of the turn to use all of its emergency propulsion, it will be able to move sectors equal to the sum of its normal speed and its extra sectors from emergency propulsion.

PvK