How to program Mine and Sat layers

[Urendi Maleldil]

I find that defending your systems by manually placing mines and satellites is tedious. That's why I program my mine and satellite layers to launch their units over important warp points automatically using the Repeat Orders and Repeat Build functions.

The following instructions are for a satellite layer, but the process for programming a mine layer is exactly the same.

Step 1: Preparing the Satellite Layer
Build a satellite layer and some defense satellites. Then load the satellite layer with defense satellites and move it to the side, using up all available movement points.

This way the "Launch Units Remotely" button is activated, and the satellite layer won't move when you're trying to give it a set of repeating orders.

Step 2: Preparing the Planets
Decide where in the system you want to produce satellites. All colonized planets can build units, so choose planets that don't have space yards (This way your sat layer won't interfere with ship construction).

Select the build queue of the first planet and tell it to build one turn's worth of satellites. Then click the "Repeat Build" button. Do the same with the other planets. The more planets you use, the more your satellite layer will carry each turn (depending on available cargo space).

Step 3: Programming the Ship
Make sure "Show Ship Movement Lines" is selected under the Empire Options screen (this way you can visualize the path your satellite layer will travel). Select your satellite layer.

Click the "Launch Units Remotely" button, select the warp point you want to defend, and tell it to launch satellites. Then click the "Load Cargo" button and select the nearest satellite-building planet you prepared in Step 2. Do the same with all the other planets from Step 2.

(Make sure the ship's movement path passes through a sector that contains a Resupply Depot. Otherwise your satellite layer will eventually run out of supplies and slow to 1 movement.)

Then click the "Repeat Orders" button. You can click the "View Orders" button to see if everything is layed out alright.

Now, as you play the game, your empire will continue to build satellites (or mines) and deploy them automatically until the sector hits the maximum units limit, or you change the orders.

Some variations:
You can program the satellite (or mine) layer to launch units in more than one sector. Just repeat Step 3 and make sure you tell the ship to load more units in-between remote launches.

You can also instruct the ship to launch units at a Waypoint number instead of a specific sector. This way when you change the location of the Waypoint, your ship will change course along with it.

[Atrocities]

Good advise.

[Slick]

Great summary. This can also be modified to:

- "leapfrog" sats to front line warp points and planets

- pick up other units for carriers/troop transports/minelayers/drone ships, etc.

- move population around. be careful to have a transport with low capacity so as not to drain your supplying planet of all population. full, huge worlds are the best suppliers. if you time it right, when the transport returns, the planet will be full again.

you get the idea.

[bearclaw]

And another point, to give the order to launch sats (or mines) the ship doesn't have to have sats (or mines) in cargo. Any units onboard (sats, mines, fighters, troops, weapon plats) will activate the Remote Launch button.

So you could build the layer at one planet, have all sats somewhere else, load a single troop and you can set all your orders needed. Lot more useful to know in Simultaneous movement games.

[Fyron]

Sounds like Wiki material!

[Xrati]

You do not have to worry about ending the turn on the point of mine laying. As long as you don't try to lay two sets of mines within one turn you will be fine giving repeat orders to the laying point and return to planet to load.

[Slick]

Yeah, these ships on "Repeat Orders" must be checked on from time to time. They occasionally get stuck for no reason. They also have troubles when cargo transfers don't go right (either side full/empty and trying to fill/empty even more). I'm pretty sure they forget their orders if attacked. The pathing routine will always choose the shortest path so opening/closing warp points in their path will affect them and could make their orders impossible. They also will fail when the sector limits are reached.

[Possum]

Slick said:
Yeah, these ships on "Repeat Orders" must be checked on from time to time. They occasionally get stuck for no reason. They also have troubles when cargo transfers don't go right (either side full/empty and trying to fill/empty even more). I'm pretty sure they forget their orders if attacked. The pathing routine will always choose the shortest path so opening/closing warp points in their path will affect them and could make their orders impossible. They also will fail when the sector limits are reached.

You know, Slick, I've been using this technique in SE4 Classic for years now, and I've never had a ship get "stuck" mysteriously. Perhaps this was a bug in Gold?

[Urendi Maleldil]

As far as I know the ship won't get stuck unless it becomes damaged, or runs out of supply. You can keep the sats flowing when an enemy enters the system by changing the clear orders on enemy encounter (I forget the name) option in the Empire Options screen.

[bearclaw]

I think what Slick is refering to is if a ship has orders to load and there isn't any of that type, then it clears its orders. At least, it use to. It doesnt' do that anymore but I can't remember if that changed from Classic to Gold or if it was a patch somewhere in Gold.

I'm hoping that SEV will allow you to specify how many units can be remotely launched instead of all or nothing.