Whats the best way to set your strikeforces on autodefend?

[Grovemann]

Hi guys!

Last session I was wondering what the most effective way was to cover your empire with defending strikeforces, in case of pirate attacks or Alf comming back for his revenge.

Building masses of ships and clicking the automate circle didn't quite do the job, since they wheren't 100% on their post with that. Especially when I was at war they went on the offense where some of them should have stayed on defense.

My first thought is simple. Take a strikeforce, set it's homebase to a planet (station) in the centre of a sector you want to be taken care of, send them to the planet, click on one icon so it becomes a shield (defend), set range to sector.. and thats it.

Now their mission is None, and I'm hoping in case of a pirate attack they automaticely move to every spot within that blue circle area to destroy everything thats attacking me in it.

Is that the correct way of doing this, and does it work?

Is the range set to sector allright?

And generally, whats the best way of doing this, so they automaticely defend your empire quick and satisfying?

Refueling, repairing and retrofitting should be included in this process aswell, of course.

Thanks, cheers!

[onomastikon]

In principle, that should work for most situations. I frequently set the range 1 notch lower (nearby systems) depending on ... stuff.
In practice, you will need to spend some time babysitting. Just because you see that cozy blue circle does not mean your ships are actually there. Sometimes you'll need to gather them up, and sometimes you will need to refuel them manually. Mileage may vary.

[Grovemann]

ok, why would I need to put the range lower?

This game they are overlapping most of the time at the edges.. But I have some outposts where the sector range defends some mining stations in cloud systems.

[Theluin]

You might want to set them lower than 1 sector on earlier techs when hyperdrives are slow. I find that before tech 4 (approximately) your ships often won't arrive in time to save a mining base that's a sector away from them.
All in all my small patrol fleets (for defence against light enemy raiders) are on nearby range while larger defence fleets (designed to counter enemy attack fleets) are set to sector range.

[Grovemann]

Do you think this thing would be efficient if the radius set to sector was overlapping with other strikeforces, so you have 2 strikeforces being in charge of one system thats far away from both of them?

I see your point, and it's helping me allready, but I'd just wanted to do some brainstorming in that direction.

btw. onomastikon mentioned that you still have to babysit a little bit, does that mean that your strikeforces, under the preferences mentioned before, will not repair automaticely in the nearest spaceport? Or is this just in some rare instances when you're checking on your strikeforces anyway?

And what is the difference in letting your strikeforce have No Mission and patrol?

Cheers! [:)]