I think there's a bug in the "launch missile at" command for a tg. The endurance clock of the buoys is incorrect in some instances.
I was just learning how to use this command. So, for awhile I'd been flying to jp's and manually firing a sensor buoy. Then as I started to learn how this command works (after firing a couple of salvos of short range combat missles into space
, I've been starting to use this command to have my ships go to each jp and drop one of my sensor buoys there.
The bug occurs when a ship goes to a jp where this "launch missiles at" command had been used to place a buoy, and where the buoy is still active. The situation was one where I saw my buoys were running down. My one ship in the system had three left, so I told it to go ahead and drop buoys on three of the jp's then head back to Sol to reload.
Thus I had a ship with buoys loaded fly to a jp that still had a buoy with about 25 days left on it active. The ship then executed a 'launch missiles at" command to the jp.
The bug is that instead of a new buoy appearing with a new 6.7 month endurance clock starting to run, I instead got a label on the screen telling me that I now had 2x of the buoys there, but with only the 25 day endurance clock of the expiring buoy. And, sure enough, some 25 days later, both of the buoys expired and now I have no buoys at the jp.
The buoys are of the same design.
The ship laying the buoy is of the same class I'm sure. It does not appear to be the exact same ship. But I wouldn't be totally sure of that. I've got three of this class flying around. This did happen on two consecutive jp's, and on the second jp that's still active for a few more days, it says it was ship #003 that laid the 2x buoys that are now there, while its ship #001 that I see now flying back towards Sol for a re-up on the buoys.
The jp's where I'd previously manually fired the buoys are working fine. When a ship arrives there and deploys a new buoy with the 'launch missiles at' command, I get two separate buoys with two separate endurance clocks. Thus, the expiring clock runs down and I'm left with the new buoy I laid just like I wanted. It seems to be only the case where I use the 'launch missiles at' command at a jp where I already had a still active buoy from a previous 'launch missiles at' command where I get the mistake of having the new buoy just added to the soon expiring group of existing buoys.