Interesting thing I learned about waypoints...

[geoschmo]

This is probably one of those things that everybody knew but me, but I find it a very interesting and useful feature and I just only discovered it over the weekend.

If you have a way point assigned and ships with orders to move to that way point, resetting that way point will automatically redirect the ships to the new location.

Huh? What's that mean? Well let me give you a couple of examples.

One thing I will often do with way points is set my space yards to send ships to that way point and then as soon as a ship finishes it will be given orders to go there. This cuts down on micromanagment some and is usefull for sending the output of several systems worth of yards to one central location for fleeting up. As territory is won and lost you may find it neccesary to move that collection point. By resetting the way point you don't have to change the construction bases, they will send ships to the new base automatically.

Second point is similer. Say you are moving a bunch of ships to fill a gap in the front lines in the middle of a war. You have ships enroute coming from all over your empire. If the enemy overruns the system your rally point was in, your ships would be destroyed in ones and twos as they straggeled into the rondevous location piecemeal. You'd have to tediously go through all the ships orders that were heading for that location and chnage them to the new point. But if you just reset the waypoint they all automatically are redirected to the new safer location.

Geoschmo

[Fyron]

I've known that for like a year.

[minipol]

i didn't know that. good to know! i'm still a newbie wrestling with the ministers to even get them to launch satelittes

[Puke]

yes, many newbies think that the ministers might do usefull things. in time, you too will give up on them.

[Gryphin]

Geo thanks,
That explains something. In a recent game vs AI my #3 waypoint (on the western edge of my empire) bcame obsolete. I had already created one further west of there, (#5). So I reassigned the #3 Waypoint to a location on toward the South Eastern edge of my empire....
Guess what..
Thanks for clearing up the mystery.

[ September 03, 2002, 12:36: Message edited by: Gryphin ]

[Gryphin]

As for the launching of satelites:
The first time a sat is built at a planet I
Click on the planet
Tell it to launch the Satelites
Tell it to Repeat Order
Even if there are no sats to launch it will keep the order active.