Need Help With Patrol Behavior

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Shepp
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Need Help With Patrol Behavior

Post by Shepp » Mon, 20. Sep 21, 15:17

I cannot seem to figure out how the patrol behavior is supposed to work. When I set a ship or fleet to this behavior, I get the icon in the middle of the sector with an arrow to it. The ship(s) then flay around in non-travel mode. But they never seem to engage any enemies that appear. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong so any help would be appreciated.

Ezarkal
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Re: Need Help With Patrol Behavior

Post by Ezarkal » Mon, 20. Sep 21, 15:58

It does work. Your ship goes in the designated sector, and move randomly around while engaging targets that get in range. The engagement range is fairly short, though, compared to the size of the sector.

My patrol wings in Frontier's Edge will engage Kha'aks and Xenons harrasing my miners there, but only if they are already nearby.
I don't know what the actual range is, but I assume it's based on the wind commander's experience???

I would like something a bit more reactive, though. Something like, a ship under attack sends a distress signal, and a wing get dispatched to help even from the other side of the sector. Same with a scout ship spotting enemy movement in the sector. It would make it worthwhile to dedicate small patrols in the mining sectors, that are able to call bigger wings to help. It could be linked to the presence of an admin module in the system, giving an actual purpose to those modules.

One can dream. :roll:
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humility925
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Re: Need Help With Patrol Behavior

Post by humility925 » Sat, 25. Sep 21, 09:04

Sady, you might had to manual attack enemies in that range, patrol won't do, it's just wander off, not helping other ship under your own when it's got attacked.
Had a compassionate when you able... :)

Treycore
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Re: Need Help With Patrol Behavior

Post by Treycore » Sat, 25. Sep 21, 14:34

Shepp wrote:
Mon, 20. Sep 21, 15:17
I cannot seem to figure out how the patrol behavior is supposed to work. When I set a ship or fleet to this behavior, I get the icon in the middle of the sector with an arrow to it. The ship(s) then flay around in non-travel mode. But they never seem to engage any enemies that appear. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong so any help would be appreciated.
I just have them protect an area instead of patrol

xant
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Re: Need Help With Patrol Behavior

Post by xant » Sat, 25. Sep 21, 14:55

If you have specific areas you want to protect, you can set up a string of looped "Attack enemies in range" commands.

Your ship will fly there, attack all enemies in the area and/or if there are none, move on to the next designated area. Once finished, the loop is repeated.

You can also loop one single "Attack enemies in area" command, which is most likely the best way to have a ship engage all enemies continuously, keeping an area clean at all times.

humility925
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Re: Need Help With Patrol Behavior

Post by humility925 » Sat, 25. Sep 21, 20:03

Those above command still won't work when you had many miner everywhere and khaak, because it's seem those command is limited range,

what we want is that your war ship go assist to your ship that under attack whatever, whenever, wherever as it need. We don't had that property command like that. All we got is this patrol that are not patrol, just wander off in sector in same sector other ship are under attack and need help, but patrol ship didn't help them,
We had guard area, that is too small area where miner left and right far, far away from small area to mining that they need to do.

it's too limited and not work when you had couple miner, unless you had ton of money to buy lot of "L" to guard each miner (M and S won't do, it's waste money and time, risk losing money for miners)

Even you had miner that good shield and speed, and command set flee when under attack,

Miner keep coming back same area where enemies are, mostly Khaak, and still got attack again by same enemies, it's waste time for station that need raw resource and still waiting on miner to get raw goods, but miner too busy flee and come back, then repeat.
Had a compassionate when you able... :)

Panos
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Re: Need Help With Patrol Behavior

Post by Panos » Sat, 25. Sep 21, 20:51

humility925 wrote:
Sat, 25. Sep 21, 20:03
Those above command still won't work when you had many miner everywhere and khaak, because it's seem those command is limited range,

what we want is that your war ship go assist to your ship that under attack whatever, whenever, wherever as it need. We don't had that property command like that. All we got is this patrol that are not patrol, just wander off in sector in same sector other ship are under attack and need help, but patrol ship didn't help them,
We had guard area, that is too small area where miner left and right far, far away from small area to mining that they need to do.

it's too limited and not work when you had couple miner, unless you had ton of money to buy lot of "L" to guard each miner (M and S won't do, it's waste money and time, risk losing money for miners)

Even you had miner that good shield and speed, and command set flee when under attack,

Miner keep coming back same area where enemies are, mostly Khaak, and still got attack again by same enemies, it's waste time for station that need raw resource and still waiting on miner to get raw goods, but miner too busy flee and come back, then repeat.
Solution is to use L miners with a Heavy fighter on them. Job done. 1 HF like an Ares can mop 5-7 KHK

capitalduty
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Re: Need Help With Patrol Behavior

Post by capitalduty » Sat, 25. Sep 21, 21:29

Maybe a waypoint patrol option could improve this??

gorgofdoom
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Re: Need Help With Patrol Behavior

Post by gorgofdoom » Tue, 2. Nov 21, 16:12

humility925 wrote:
Sat, 25. Sep 21, 20:03
Those above command still won't work when you had many miner everywhere and khaak, because it's seem those command is limited range,

what we want is that your war ship go assist to your ship that under attack whatever, whenever, wherever as it need. We don't had that property command like that. All we got is this patrol that are not patrol, just wander off in sector in same sector other ship are under attack and need help, but patrol ship didn't help them,
We had guard area, that is too small area where miner left and right far, far away from small area to mining that they need to do.

it's too limited and not work when you had couple miner, unless you had ton of money to buy lot of "L" to guard each miner (M and S won't do, it's waste money and time, risk losing money for miners)

Even you had miner that good shield and speed, and command set flee when under attack,

Miner keep coming back same area where enemies are, mostly Khaak, and still got attack again by same enemies, it's waste time for station that need raw resource and still waiting on miner to get raw goods, but miner too busy flee and come back, then repeat.
I'm not 100% on the police behavior but if they behave anything like regular sector police they should do just that. Maybe not, but it's something to explore. I do wonder what the current police force is doing if the kh'ak are such a problem.

My current method of protecting miners is just to make them absurdly fast. When my M miners cruise at 700m/s the Kh'ak simply can't keep up (with a max speed of 500) at best they get off a few hits, try to t-drive after it, and lose sight. They then either find one of my bigger heavily armed wyverns or the nearby station turrets and simply die without any combat ships involved. I think out of 400 M miners built i've lost... 6. All of them with sub-par equipment. Occasionally one of my L's will get swarmed, if it does i just enable one tracking launcher group set up with swarm missiles.

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grapedog
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Re: Need Help With Patrol Behavior

Post by grapedog » Thu, 4. Nov 21, 07:27

gorgofdoom wrote:
Tue, 2. Nov 21, 16:12
humility925 wrote:
Sat, 25. Sep 21, 20:03
Those above command still won't work when you had many miner everywhere and khaak, because it's seem those command is limited range,

what we want is that your war ship go assist to your ship that under attack whatever, whenever, wherever as it need. We don't had that property command like that. All we got is this patrol that are not patrol, just wander off in sector in same sector other ship are under attack and need help, but patrol ship didn't help them,
We had guard area, that is too small area where miner left and right far, far away from small area to mining that they need to do.

it's too limited and not work when you had couple miner, unless you had ton of money to buy lot of "L" to guard each miner (M and S won't do, it's waste money and time, risk losing money for miners)

Even you had miner that good shield and speed, and command set flee when under attack,

Miner keep coming back same area where enemies are, mostly Khaak, and still got attack again by same enemies, it's waste time for station that need raw resource and still waiting on miner to get raw goods, but miner too busy flee and come back, then repeat.
I'm not 100% on the police behavior but if they behave anything like regular sector police they should do just that. Maybe not, but it's something to explore. I do wonder what the current police force is doing if the kh'ak are such a problem.

My current method of protecting miners is just to make them absurdly fast. When my M miners cruise at 700m/s the Kh'ak simply can't keep up (with a max speed of 500) at best they get off a few hits, try to t-drive after it, and lose sight. They then either find one of my bigger heavily armed wyverns or the nearby station turrets and simply die without any combat ships involved. I think out of 400 M miners built i've lost... 6. All of them with sub-par equipment. Occasionally one of my L's will get swarmed, if it does i just enable one tracking launcher group set up with swarm missiles.
Patrol commands should work better though. My ships should be able to get help from patrolling ships. I shouldn't have to manually send my ships out after kha'ak spawns every time. If i have a patrol in that sector, they should respond to my ships in distress.

And for people who are playing with limits like faction only ships, only the SPL have miners fast enough to outrun the kha'ak. Doesn't help if im playing as ARG.

gorgofdoom
Posts: 196
Joined: Wed, 5. Dec 18, 18:48
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Re: Need Help With Patrol Behavior

Post by gorgofdoom » Mon, 8. Nov 21, 04:27

I can't argue with you on that. Everything can and should work better.

I'll add some ideas to my suggestions that could help today, since i can't really make it any better myself.

Build a small depot/ refinery. assign M miners to mine specific ores in a zone around that station with repeat. Assign frigates & interceptors to attack anything in a 40KM radius of that station with the "protect position" behavior or repeat "attack all enemies".

If any of the miners are attacked they will retreat to the station, which will also be supported by any fleets set up above. Their slow speed will be compensated by very short travel distances. We can see they survive with minimal support even over a fairly long distance in the "protect the miner from kh'ak" missions.

The downside is that this strategy requires building tons of stations. However.... the upside is also that it forces us to build a ton of small, economically stable stations that are also better for performance than a mega-station. Especially consider the workforce mechanics. (more stations = better)

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