Shore leave orders?

[vonduus (OP)]

What is the exact difference between the "move to" and the "picket" orders?

Also, I am looking for a command to give my truckers, who are hauling stuff on a permanent basis (cyclic orders). After so and so many months of travel, they need to get drunk or something, so I have figured out how many round trips they can do, before they need booze. But I haven't figured out, what command will let them stay planet-bound until their required shore leave is ended.

If I give them a move to command, they do exactly that (move to planet), and then carry on immediately with their planned schedule right away. If I give them a picket order, they picket my planet forever, and never goes back to sceduled orders. What to do?

[Icecoon]

1. When you give the ships the picket order they will turn off all engines reducing their thermal signature to 0. It's useful when you want to spy on some alien ship or planet.

2. There is no "shore leave" order, you have to park the ships at the planet for some time for the shore leave counter to reduce to zero, so you will have to cancel the cyclic orders.

[vonduus (OP)]

That is what I thought, but it is always good to get one's guesses confirmed  .

There is no "shore leave" order, you have to park the ships at the planet for some time for the shore leave counter to reduce to zero, so you will have to cancel the cyclic orders.

Too bad. But I see there is a lively discussion in the suggestions thread on this topic, so hopefully some automation will follow in a coming update to the game. Thanks for answering.

[Icecoon]

You are welcome.

[sloanjh]

Moved to the academy.

[Rabid_Cog]

Actually, for freighters it is quite easy to get their shore leave. Just make sure one of the endpoint colonies have sufficient population and reduce your loading/unloading speed a little. Every time you stop to load, your crew will take shoreleave.

It does get annoying with all the spam about freighters that are done taking shore leave, but apparently that is fixed in 6.2

[vonduus (OP)]

How do I reduce my loading speed? I know I can make loading speed faster by building starports and research cargo handling equipment, but if a planet has no starport I can take away...?

[Jorgen_CAB]

Since this issue will be fixed in the next version I just envision that ships classed as commercial are replacing their crew quite frequently so I just ignore this for them for the time being.

It can be a bit hard to filter out from the event list though if you named your commercial ships individually as I do in most occasions, I will welcome a change when commercial ships are removed from the even list.

That being said I also have high hopes for some sort of shore leave ordering of ships in general, especially for ships performing task force training. I would very much like to see ships pulling in for shore leave and then continue with task force training once done as one example. It is a pain in the ass to do fleet training with ships that has very small deployment time with ships such as fast attack crafts etc..

[alex_brunius]

It is a pain in the ass to do fleet training with ships that has very small deployment time with ships such as fast attack crafts etc..

Just put them in a Carrier and have that one do fleet training instead?

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes, for fighter and sometimes FAC sized craft that is possible. With Frigate sized ships its not very practical. With the new way that engines work we will see a lot more bigger ships acting much like FAC did earlier. The designs I have now are between 3000-4000 tons and operate in squadrons of three. I might have several of these squadrons on fleet training at the same time, along with fighters and other smaller craft that need fleet training. I just don't have enough hangar space to do that.

I also tend to have a few dedicated training stations with hangars around in the Sol system to conduct most of my fleet training with replacement fighters or fighters that are dedicated to PDC duties.

[Polaris]

Got a question:  Why do you care about crew morale on any ship that doesn't shoot? As far as my reading (and testing) can tell, crew morale is simply a multiplier to crew training, which only affects delay time before combat orders are executed.

[metalax]

The only real non-combat issue with morale is for geosurvey and gravsurvey ships as it effects survey speed. It does effect when they will start following orders so it could be the difference betwen escape and destruction when you tell your commercial ships to flee for the jump point.

[Nathan_]

Order delay at colonies will accomplish this to a certain extent.