Sentry command

[TurinTurambar]

I've never really understood the Sentry command. What does it really do (I can't get it to do anything) and what are some possible applications?

I've heard it mentioned you could set a Star Destroyer on a sun and give it the Sentry order and somehow it nukes the sun when enemies warp in?

I've never gotten Sentry to cause a ship to do anything at all. Not suprising since I am probably using it incorrectly out of pure ignorance.

Turin

[geoschmo]

TurinTurambar said:
I've never gotten Sentry to cause a ship to do anything at all.

The Sentry command tells the ship to "Do nothing", so if your ship did nothing, then it worked exactly the way it was supposed to.

What I use sentry for is to take ships out "out of the loop" for the next ship button. When the empire gets large it's difficult to keep track of everything. So I go through all teh ships using teh next ship button and make sure everybody is doing what I want them to do. Next ship skips over ships that already have orders. Sometimes I want ships to do nothing, like if they are sitting over a training depot, or guarding a warp point. So I give those ships the sentry order so they won't do anything and I don't have to stop on them every time when going through the next ship loop.

Telling a ship to do nothing is not at all the same as not telling the ship to do anything.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

.....and somehow it nukes the sun when enemies warp in?

Heeheehee..... Somehow, I find this phrase comical. Nukes the sun..... heeheehee.

I always give ships the Sentry order when I want them to guard/train, or simply wait until the entire fleet is assembled. I never use the next/previous ship/fleet/planet/whatever buttons though.

[Phoenix-D]

The Sentry order is pretty simple. It holds the ship where it is until enemies arrive, then executes any other orders in the list.

So if your Star Destroyer was parked over a star, and you gave it these orders:

Sentry
Destroy Star

It would destroy the star when it first saw an enemy ship enter the system.

[TurinTurambar]

Phoenix-D said:
The Sentry order is pretty simple. It holds the ship where it is until enemies arrive, then executes any other orders in the list.

So if your Star Destroyer was parked over a star, and you gave it these orders:

Sentry
Destroy Star

It would destroy the star when it first saw an enemy ship enter the system.

Now THAT is the information I was looking for!

Thanks all,
Turin

[Wade]

Concerning the cycle *Fleets* swicth.

Pressing sentry for a Fleet sets the individual ships within it to sentry but the Fleet still cycles.

Is there a way to set Fleets to sentry so that they do not cycle?

-Wade

[Urendi Maleldil]

Woah. So if the fleet orders cycle while the individual ship orders are sentried, does that mean you can order a fleet to patrol through a system and then when it sees an enemy ship to execute individual ship orders?

[Arkcon]

Phoenix-D said:
The Sentry order is pretty simple. It holds the ship where it is until enemies arrive, then executes any other orders in the list.

So if your Star Destroyer was parked over a star, and you gave it these orders:

Sentry
Destroy Star

It would destroy the star when it first saw an enemy ship enter the system.

TurinTurambar said:
Now THAT is the information I was looking for!

Thanks all,
Turin

Yeah, or if the ship ran out of supplies, it will also clear its Sentry orders. That could happen to a parked ship that took damage to components that held half of its supplies, by intel or some random event.

[Frederick_d_Ohlmann]

Sentry has 2 use : trigger the order once ennemy is in the system (like blowing away the system - I tend to haves a black hole creator in every system I control) because the sentry clear and others order resolve
Or skipping them for next button, to have less ship to walk throught.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

As for blowing up the star after enemies enter the sys, this is when you've got Clear orders when enemy presence is detected on, right? Or is it just that a sentry order is automatically cancelled when you detect an enemy?