manual fleet control: get rid of "engage system targets"?

[catweasel]

I have a colony (Osis 4) in a system with a large pirate starbase, which I do not want to attack (for now). However, I would like to have my colony guarded against raids and assigned a fleet to it the following way:
- based at colony Osis 4
- Posture: defend Osis 4 only
- set to manual control

What happens is that this fleet will close in to the pirate starbase nevertheless and gets destroyed. I assume it's because the "Engage system targets" which is still active and I can't get rid of. Any way to assign a ship/fleet on guard duties for a specifc planet/base while ignoring the rest of the system?

[Bingeling]

I think you are fighting the game and are going to lose this particular battle.

I assume that just changing the engagement stance of the fleet is not enough, as they sooner or later head for default after some order.

However, head for (I think) options - empire options, and change the default engagement stance to "when attacked" or something like that. That will affect every ship/fleet in the empire, though. And may lead to fleets elsewhere watching pirates do their things to mining bases and stuff.

[NephilimNexus]

The bad news is that even if you set it to "engage when attacked" the game will reset it to "system targets" entirely on it's own after a while.

[Bingeling]

That is why you change the default stance in options...

I would bust that pirate base, though. And if unable to, load the colony with troops and leave the system until able to...

[Aeson]

If you really don't want to bust down a pirate base in your colonized system, my suggestion would be to pay off the pirate faction long enough to get a good space station or two built over the colony, and perhaps a planetary shield generator. The space station isn't going to run over to the pirate base and kill itself, and raiders cannot go through planetary shields.

[Yank31]

raiders cannot go through planetary shields.

I'm sorry, WHAT?

Pirate raiders can't go through an anti-bombardment shield?

[NephilimNexus]

Yeah, since when?

[FerretStyle]

My post from another ancient thread. I think this should help with your problem:

Go to options, go to Empire Settings, change Default Engagement Stances - Manual to something else. I think the "Other" box is what's giving you trouble since that seems to be applied to any ship after it finishes a task (such as killing a target or completing a move order). I set mine to "no default stance (no change)" so it continues to do what I told it to before.

[Aeson]

I'm sorry, WHAT?

Pirate raiders can't go through an anti-bombardment shield?

Yeah, since when?

This has been true in every version that I've tested it in, including 1.9.10. You can give the orders, and the ships will fly over the target planet, but they will not launch pods, no troops will appear on the planet's surface, and you will not receive any raiding trophies (money, technological progress, resources), nor will the target world gain the 'recently raided' message.

I test it by starting a game as a pirate faction and using the editor to spawn shields on independent (and imperial) colonies, giving myself a bunch of ships, and issuing raid orders, and it certainly appears to work for my imperial colonies when I actually build them while playing as a normal empire rather than cheating them in as target dummies in a test game as pirates. They prevent raids on the planet (after the shield completes) even if I don't invest other military assets, even when it's in an area that I have not yet secured and still see frequent pirate activity hitting ships and stations over the shielded planet, including once on a conquered independent colony in a system with a pirate space port. Cheapest way I know of for dealing with raids, as a PSG costs only about as much as two to four infantry units (depending on species) to maintain and the 20K purchase cost is basically negligible. Put five or ten infantry divisions on the planet while it builds to train them up and temporarily secure the planet, and then move them elsewhere.

My assumption is that the reason this works has something to do with the requirement that boarding pods have which prevents them from being used against shields with more than X strength (where X is I think 20 shield points to 100 shield points depending on boarding pod technology). How strong planetary shields are is not something revealed by the game, but the strength is likely significant since planetary shields block any and all bombardment weapons, regardless of how advanced they are, short of the one which actually blows the planet away; presumably this is sufficiently strong to block boarding pods designed to penetrate the weaker shields of ships which have been worn down by combat, whereas troop ships use something (be it a shuttle or the entire ship) which was designed to bypass that kind of shielding but which is sufficiently large to significantly reduce its utility for use against ships (probably, the boarding pods use a scaled-down, weaker version of this system rather than the troopships use a scaled-up, more powerful version, as any troopship can deliver troops to any planet regardless of the defenses, if the issue isn't simply that the planetary shields simply cannot stop objects the size of full-scale shielded warships from entering the atmosphere and landing troops, though then it becomes a question of how to justify the inability of a raiding warship to enter the atmosphere and penetrate the shield before launching boarding pods).