What a "picket (Speed 1km/s)" command does?

[telegraph (OP)]

subj.  what is it and how do I use it correct?

[Bgreman]

It essentially orders the task force to go to the destination and then reduce its speed to 1 km/s, which will make its thermal signature almost zero.  This is useful if you want to have a ship with passive sensors spy on enemy forces.

[xeryon]

One catch when using it: in picket mode your speed is set to 1kms and when you give the ship new orders it's speed will remain at 1kms until your manually change it.  If you forget to change it Aurora will generate all kinds of errors due to the ships estimated travel time exceeding some parameter limits hard coded into the game.

[Theokrat]

It essentially orders the task force to go to the destination and then reduce its speed to 1 km/s, which will make its thermal signature almost zero.  This is useful if you want to have a ship with passive sensors spy on enemy forces.

Or when you just have a ship that you dont want to have spotted for no reason. I frequently use it for harvesters, terraformers and asteroid miners. These things are expensive and move rarely, so one might as well conceal their position a bit.

[wedgebert]

One catch when using it: in picket mode your speed is set to 1kms and when you give the ship new orders it's speed will remain at 1kms until your manually change it.  If you forget to change it Aurora will generate all kinds of errors due to the ships estimated travel time exceeding some parameter limits hard coded into the game.

It's less hard coded parameter limits and more VB6 using 16-bit integers which gives an upper limit of 32,767 for a signed value (65,536 for unsigned)

[Steve Walmsley]

It's less hard coded parameter limits and more VB6 using 16-bit integers which gives an upper limit of 32,767 for a signed value (65,536 for unsigned)

I tend to use 32-bit long integer and the currency data type, which according to the VB6 documentation is a:

64-bit (8-byte) number in an integer format, scaled by 10,000 to give a fixed-point number with 15 digits to the left of the decimal point and 4 digits to the right

I use that for the large numbers in the game such as the time (which is tracked in seconds) and for any calculations (to avoid floating point errors). The time required field on the Fleet window was using a long, so I have changed it to a currency for v6.00

Steve

[Jikor]

To clairfy if you have a ship go somewhere and do NOT use picket mode then it would still show it's normal thermal signature? Even if you tell it to orbit a planet or to just sit at a gate, Waypoint, etc. ?

[telegraph (OP)]

And  ship that is not going anywhere, but is still showing it's full speed (survey for example) - does it still use fuel at normal rate?

[Zook]

I think not. A jump gate constructor ship, for example, stays in place for a year and does not use any fuel.

[telegraph (OP)]

does it show his max speed on the system map view? I have never built construction ships with engines or fuel

[Zook]

Yes.

[SteelChicken]

What does picket give you that just moving there and stopping does not?

[Bgreman]

Ships only use fuel when they are actually moving, regardless of their speed setting.  A ship ordered to move to a location, or orbit a body, still has a thermal signature based on its speed setting, even if it isn't moving.  I wish this would change, as it makes managing your thermal emissions a pain.

Also a pain is that splitting or reorganizing task forces resets their speed to max, even if they were explicitly set to something else.

Again, Picket sets the speed to 1 km/s upon arrival, which reduces thermal signature.  Just moving there and stopping does not change speed setting, and therefore does not change thermal signature.

Thermal signature is bugged anyway, and ships underway are detected by DSTS at least as if they have their max thermal signature.

[Theokrat]

What does picket give you that just moving there and stopping does not?

If by "stopping" you mean just telling it to go to some place and then forgetting about it: It reduces the thermal signature to near-invisible.

If you mean manually setting the speed to 1km/s, then the only benefit is saving you three clicks.

[SteelChicken]

Ah, the key point of information is that the engines create a max speed-szed thermal signature even if you are not using them.

Check.