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Some times I have been noticing problems with orders for explorers and military ships being overridden after a few seconds when any space creatures are in the system.

Explores escape if there is a creature in the system even if its on the other side of the system. Move to commands now get overidden after a few seconds. You have to wait for them to leave the system to give them orders.

What will happen is that the explorer gets in an endless loop till low on fuel of "escape" >> "move to system" >> "escape".

Trying to issue another order will not work as it will be overridden with the "escape" after a few seconds.

Trying to use the queue doesn't seem to work either as it will still try to return to the system before checking the queue.

Turning off automation seems to sort of work as it seems to break out of the loop after a few cycles. I think that the explorer gets close enough to the sun at some point to belive the move to command is completed and can now use the next command in the queue.

How I work around these problems is to issue a "Stop" command after hyper out of the system and either issue a new command or let the ship get the next command in the queue.

If the ship is on auto explore and the system is large the ship could be doing this for months as it tries to explore the system.


Now if a military ship enters the system it has the opposite problem as it will try to "attack" the creature no mater the orders or stance. I have only tested with ships given manual order to goto the systems. I haven't noticed any problems with automated ships but they hunt the creatures anyway so I probably would not detect the behavior.

The refuel command seems to be the only one to get the ships to leave the system but it needs to be done before the ships hyper close to creatures so that they don't get destroyed.

Attacking pirates also allows you to leave the system.

I have not tried the refuel command on explorers.

Yes I had a Military Ship who I couldnt stop from attacking a Kaltor, it would reset my move order back to attack.

I've seen this as well.

The problem was discussed at some length in this topic. See in particular Elliot's explanation in the second post.

I still think that the issue shouldn't rest with that. The behavior of ships you are trying to command is apparently in some very unhealthy way connected to a global setting affecting many, many ships in your empire. This shouldn't be the last word. But don't expect a quick fix.

Thanks for the comments on these situations.

There is a bug in 1.7.0.4 which affects manually controlled ships, especially exploration ships. This sometimes causes ships to override manual orders. This is fixed in the next update.

Please note though that military ships will properly engage threats based on their Engagement Stance (set by cycling Comma key). So if there is a space creature in the same system and the military ship's stance is "Engage system targets", then it will attack the space creature - this is by design. To stop the military ship from attacking a threat you can set a more confined Engagement Stance like "Engage Nearby Targets" or "Engage when attacked".

ORIGINAL: sbach2o
The problem was discussed at some length in this topic. See in particular Elliot's explanation in the second post.

I still think that the issue shouldn't rest with that. The behavior of ships you are trying to command is apparently in some very unhealthy way connected to a global setting affecting many, many ships in your empire. This shouldn't be the last word. But don't expect a quick fix.

Note that the "Default Engagement Stances" in the Empire Settings screen (from Game Options screen) are not really global settings in the way that you are describing them.

These "Default Engagement Stances" are simply the stances that are set for military ships when you assign specific mission types. Effectively these are shortcuts that set the engagement stance to something logical for the mission type, without you having to manually do this each time. If you do not like the current default stances you can change them to anything else.

If you do not want your engagement stance overridden at all then in the "Default Engagement Stances" panel (Empire Settings screen) simply use the setting "No default stance". Then your military ships will always stay on their current Engagement Stance (whatever you have manually selected with the Comma key).

ORIGINAL: elliotg

ORIGINAL: sbach2o
The problem was discussed at some length in this topic. See in particular Elliot's explanation in the second post.

I still think that the issue shouldn't rest with that. The behavior of ships you are trying to command is apparently in some very unhealthy way connected to a global setting affecting many, many ships in your empire. This shouldn't be the last word. But don't expect a quick fix.

Note that the "Default Engagement Stances" in the Empire Settings screen (from Game Options screen) are not really global settings in the way that you are describing them.

These "Default Engagement Stances" are simply the stances that are set for military ships when you assign specific mission types. Effectively these are shortcuts that set the engagement stance to something logical for the mission type, without you having to manually do this each time. If you do not like the current default stances you can change them to anything else.

If you do not want your engagement stance overridden at all then in the "Default Engagement Stances" panel (Empire Settings screen) simply use the setting "No default stance". Then your military ships will always stay on their current Engagement Stance (whatever you have manually selected with the Comma key).

I'd have to try that out, maybe I was making assumptions. These assumptions were:

In the Empire Settings there are four categories 'Patrol', 'Escort', 'Attack' (?), 'Other'. The first two of these look like they directly correspoind to orders military ships can perform, so I was assuming they really apply there. About the one which I have forgotten , I don't know (Attack? then the default setting is sensible), the last looks like a fallback as in 'use this for ships which have no specific orders in the former categories'.

In each category you can select between four stances. The settings for 'Patrol' and 'Escort' are fine. It is the 'Other' that causes most of the pains when its setting is 'Engage system targets'. Usually, having it at 'Engage nearby targets' works, unless the ship is directly attacked. Then it won't get the message when you tell it to run or do something more important, until other automation settings kick in. The idea to use 'no default stance' didn't occur to me, because, well, it#s meaning is completely nebulous.

The problem is, that the 'other' applies to lots of military ships under automation. Those can have orders 'Move to' or no orders at all. Then, the stance shown for them seems to match the setting under 'Other', so I was assuming they all are affected.
What about the setting no default stance? When it means that they retain the stance form their last mission (is that correct?), that'd be fine and make it the superior setting to engage nearby targets which I typically used because it seems to work with most direct intervention, but has the global effect I mentioned. I.e., if you set it to 'engage nearby' which lets ships respond satisfactorily to direct order most of the time, all those ships that could and should hunt down threats system-wide, only do so when under 'patrol' order.

Still, even a 'retain stance from last mission' as I am assuming above, would be a global effect a bit different from the 'engage system targets' I would prefer for military ships not under my direct control (as of the default setting for 'Other').