Sensor Buoy Laying Woes

[firsal (OP)]

I've set up my buoys and minelaying ships in such a way that each minelaying ship needs to move to a location (usually a JP), fire off a single buoy, then move on to the next jump point.

Issue is, I can't seem to find a way to make this happen automatically. The "Launch Missiles At" command repeats itself and gives me multiple, unnecessary buoys at a single location. Msl Launch gives me an odd bug about the ship being affected by transit shock, whatever that means.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[Paul M]

The issue should not be happening but how fast is your launcher able to cycle?  Also do you have multiple launchers loaded with the buoy?  You want the buoy only loaded in one launcher not all of them.

The commands:

Move to Jump Point X
Launch Missiles at Jump Point X
Standard Transit Jump Point X
Launch Missiles at Jump Point Y (delay 700)
Move to Jump Point Z
Launch Missiles at Jump Point Z
Standard Transit Jump Point Z
Launch Missiles at Jump Point W (delay 700)

Should give you a buoy at Jump Point X, Y, Z, W the delays are to allow the transit shock to go away.  The Move commands may be unneeded but I prefer to use them.

[firsal (OP)]

The issue should not be happening but how fast is your launcher able to cycle?  Also do you have multiple launchers loaded with the buoy?  You want the buoy only loaded in one launcher not all of them.

The commands:

Move to Jump Point X
Launch Missiles at Jump Point X
Standard Transit Jump Point X
Launch Missiles at Jump Point Y (delay 700)
Move to Jump Point Z
Launch Missiles at Jump Point Z
Standard Transit Jump Point Z
Launch Missiles at Jump Point W (delay 700)

Should give you a buoy at Jump Point X, Y, Z, W the delays are to allow the transit shock to go away.  The Move commands may be unneeded but I prefer to use them.

I do the same string of orders, but my minelayers always stop and repeat the "Launch Missiles At" command.

My minelayers have 1 size 25 launcher with a reload of roughly 2 hours

[Paul M]

With a 2 hour reload then you have to give a delay of 7300 (3600 s/hr*2 hr+100 s for safety) seconds between your command of transit and your command of Launch missiles at because now you have to wait longer than the transit shock but for the missile reload to happen from the launch of the buoy on the other side.  Transit shock is what happens when you do a jump, it is worse for standard transits where the ship can't fire for 5 min and may be sensor blind for that time as well. 

Move to Jump Point X
Launch Missile at Jump Point X
Standard transit of Jump Point X

(do those commands work as expected?)
Then do the following command:
Launch Missiles at Jump Point Y (delay 7300)

Does that solve the problem?  I have used strings of commands to launch buoys with no transit...when I was doing it with transits I had a lot more manual intervention since I had to split a ship off from its group...so I can't say for sure the above will work.  I don't understand how multiple buoys could be launched either.  If the commands are still borking up I would suggest doing the commands one at a time and see what is happening.  You know about the delay box by an order right?  For this to work at all you have to delay things to account for missile reload time and transit shock.

[firsal (OP)]

Apparently, the issue was caused by some fiddling with the design in SM mode 

The minelayers' combat screens still had the old, pre-SM box launchers the minelayers used to employ

A refit to a new design removed the old box launchers and left only a single buoy launcher

The design now works like a dream; it follows all commands and does not repeat any 

Many thanks to Paul M for his help