Sentry command

[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.

[bearclaw]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:
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?

Nope, this is something seperate. Clear Orders on enemy presense will clear ALL orders.

Sentry will unsentry when an enemy ship is in the same system regardless of what the Clear Orders On Enemy Presense setting is.

As for Fleets cycling, just select the Fleet then Sentry (Y button)and the whole fleet will be sentried and will skip when cycling.

[Wade]

bearclaw said:

As for Fleets cycling, just select the Fleet then Sentry (Y button)and the whole fleet will be sentried and will skip when cycling.

Unfortionately this turns out not to be the case.
I'm using unmodded/stock version 1.95. It seems that this should have been addressed officially by now; in one of the many upgrades.

-Wade

[Fyron]

I've probably only hit the next fleet button twice in SE4. Its so much easier to just use the next ship button (spacebar!) and issue orders to whatever fleet the next ship is in. Turn on the "stop once at each location" flag, and it covers the next fleet button functionality too. And it skips sentried ships.

[capnq]

I never use the Next buttons, but I use the (F6) Ships screen a lot. Sorting the Orders column usually puts all the Sentry ships last. (I think the only common order that comes after Sentry alphabetically is Warp.)

[Parasite]

Note that if you have "Clear Orders On Enemy Presence" option set, your Star destroyer will clear the "Destroy Star" order when enemy ships are sighted. So nothing will blow up or get turned into a black hole. I have not tested this, but expect it to work like this.

A bit more on fleet sentrys. Be sure to clear all orders before setting a fleet to sentry after moving ships in and out of it. If ships are on sentry in the fleet and more ships are added the new ones will not be at sentry. They may not show on the top level screen and that could cause confusion. this may be what is causing the cycle button to be off.

[Wade]

Cycle ships works fine by skipping sentries. Cycle fleets does not skip sentried ships even when all in a fleet are sentried. Maybe it was meant to be this way.

When we choose a fleet to sentry it should sentry the fleet and skip it during fleet cycle.

-Wade