Patrol Command Bug

posted on October 8th, 2009, 9:45 pm

I had some ships patroling my border and at first they were moving across the entire route, but after a while their route started to shrink until they were just flying in small circles. It's happened more than once, too. Thought you should know.

posted on October 8th, 2009, 11:42 pm

and that's what gravity is! 

posted on October 9th, 2009, 12:14 am

Well you are doing better than I .I have never been able to get it to work at all even before  the newest versions.

posted on October 9th, 2009, 1:02 am

I haven't noticed this problem, but i don't use Patrol that much myself

posted on October 9th, 2009, 1:05 am

I found that command to be mostly useless... I'd just put turrets there instead, and if I can't... a clump of cruisers and support ships with low movement autonomy. That usually does the trick anyway...

posted on October 9th, 2009, 1:38 am

Interesting bug: I'll try to replicate it when I get the chance if you don't get a response from a Dev soon

posted on October 9th, 2009, 7:41 pm

Patrol is useful only with ships that have long or artillery range.  All other ships, in my experience, tend to stop and face their target while on patrol, but do so beyond medium range.  So they just die.

This makes the Excelsior-II the best patrol ship out there.

posted on November 8th, 2009, 5:15 pm

Bump because this seems to happen all the time 

posted on November 10th, 2009, 5:18 pm

actually i never have been using patrol much either. i'll note that down. does someone know if that problem existed in stock armada? code-wise i haven't touched the patrol feature..

posted on November 10th, 2009, 5:35 pm

I could test, but it's harder to tell, as it will require additional testing to figure out the ranges.  If memory serves, there were only 2 actual ranges anyway.  Long and Artillery.  Both of those ranges work fine with patrol.

posted on November 10th, 2009, 10:04 pm

actually i never have been using patrol much either. i'll note that down. does someone know if that problem existed in stock armada? code-wise i haven't touched the patrol feature..

Not too sure sadly . I've made a note to test it over the next few days though

posted on November 22nd, 2009, 5:26 pm

Ok, I tested it (though admittedly, not extraordinarily thoroughly  ) and the patrol doesn't seem to shrink in AII vanilla, although it does do one weird thing: if you click the end point for the patrol, the patrol will not extend to that point, but rather the extent of the patrol is roughly one "grid" box shorter than the end point, and one grid box shorter than the starting point. In other words if you try and set a patrol that is 10 grid boxes long, the actual patrol length only ends up being 8. I tested Romulan scouts and the patrol length did not decrease over about 50 cycles (with 10 scouts being the test population).

posted on November 22nd, 2009, 6:03 pm

Did you get to look at the shooting part of Patrol?  Watching short and medium range ships just sit there, facing the enemy, getting shot to hell because they won't deviate off the patrol path, nor will they disengage from 'battle'.

It's why I only patrol as Feds now, and only with Excel IIs.    They get weapon range that keeps them from just dying.