Lost Orders
 

I ordered my SY-ship to build a cheap escort ship (as a wormhole-drone), it should be ready in 0.3 years. The SY-ship belonged to a fleet which had lots of destroyed components, I've let the fleet w/o moving over a wormhole for the time (to build the escort). In the meantime I have popped up several emergency resupply components of some of the ships. 0.3 years later no escort ship was build. So I did some observations with SY-ships:

1. If you give building orders to it, then use emergency resupply or emergency propulsion, the order and every material which is used before the use/destroy component is gone
- BTW this happens to every ship: order to move somewhere, load cargo an so on... pop-up an emergency component: order is lost

2. Then I observed the other way: I have a SY-ship without any destroyed components, use/destroy a component, after that I give the order to build a ship, the order is visible in the queue, end turn, and guess what ? The next turn the queue is empty !

A SY-ship looses its orders if it has to repair own components, can anybody tell me if that's intended ? I shouldn't think so, but I might be wrong.

Re: Lost Orders
 

You can't build and move on the same turn. Using the emergancy movement will stop the build occuring for that turn and will most likely reset the build back to turn one.

Re: Lost Orders
 

I noticed that using a resupply pod cancels orders the first time I used one. I had spotted that the ship was out of supply on the Ships window (F6) while it was en route to a warp point. I think that was a deliberate design decision; if a ship has reached the point that it needs to use a pod, you might not want it to continue of its mission, but rather to turn back and resuppply and/or repair.

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Cap'n Q

Re: Lost Orders
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Aussie Gamer:
You can't build and move on the same turn. Using the emergancy movement will stop the build occuring for that turn and will most likely reset the build back to turn one.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sorry I haven't been precise enough. I have not moved the SY-ship, just ordered to build something, then used an emergency supply and everything (including material) of the build was lost.

Re: Lost Orders
 

Further Observations: This problem only occurs with cloaked SY-ships, I have used Stealth Armor III.

Re: Lost Orders
 

However whether you moved the ship or not, certain tasks are considered movement. For example opening and closing warp points require you have movement points even though the actual opening or closing do not use any. I believe your using the resupply pods are one of those tasks which are considered movement (as they are in the programming's hierachy as taking place during the movement phase when a turn is processed). I haven't tested them all, but I believe that any of the components which can be used during movement count as movement and should not be used in conjunction with any SY-ship you are actually using for construction.

Re: Lost Orders
 

I have checked almost everything about it: If you have SY-ship which is not cloaked, give it an order to build something, don't move it (it's not possible BTW), pop-up a component, nothing happens with the build queue (everything in place, nothing lost). But if you do the same thing with a cloaked SY-ship: the build queue plus material is gone, nada, away, lost, vaporised. I have sent a small bugreport about that to MM now.

Re: Lost Orders
 

That makes sense, thanks Dracus.

Re: Lost Orders
 

...but if you cloak with stealth armor then the queue won't be cleared until you pop-up a component... with cloaking device the queue is cleared the next turn, ok. It would make more sense to restrict access to the build queue if you are cloaked.

Re: Lost Orders
 

I not sure, but I think the idea of stealth armor was to work more like the way a stealth bomber works. (yet may not correctly work this way in the game.) The armor would hide you from sensors but if you were in eye sight of the ship You would see it. So it truely is not cloaked. A cloaking device would use a large amount of energy and therefore most everything else would have to run on min power. (ie cloaking in star trek) So when you enter combat, to power your defenses, you have to turn off the cloak. Maybe using the
emergeny component draws a large amount of energy. This may be why you can build with ships that have stealth armor. The ship is not suppose to be truely hidden. But when you use the emergy component, it draws some underlining resource that we don't actually see from the yard and therefore they scrap the project.

[This message has been edited by Dracus (edited 13 April 2001).]