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1. It is but one of the many things that break with the size of the map, so, if there was a sudden interest in fixing the gameplay on such maps - what to repair first? Priorities...
2. Not having such function in game is not game-breaking. Only... very inconvenient... On certain maps... If the stats on Metaverse are any indication, 4/5 of the games are played on up to Huge - probably most players will never use it, never miss it, most of them don't even know there was an attempt to implement it. I think the stats are wrong, because I know I am not the only one who almost never finish my games on Excesssive, and I don't think they account for these games. Nevertheless, that, I guess, lowers its priority.
3. But more importantly, It isn't one of the things that could be fixed easily, so, I guess, addressing it has a really, really low priority.
So, to simplify things - there is no Sentry stance now, I think we all can agree on that. If you were to implement such function, how would it work? Let's start with the basics.
- How do you define one unit's line of sight? Because you have starbases, colonies, sensor boats, sensor stations or sensor command ships, sharing or overlapping their line of sight with the fleet or other neighboring units. On purpose. You create your own custom ships, to do exactly that. Should not alert a military unit without sensors, stationed at a long-range sensors starbase?
- Perhaps, you would like to add the unit's speed to the base of calculations. A sentry would be alerted only by the sighted enemy ships (doesn't matter who sees them) entering that unit's moves/turn limit. But that would make a mess of the sensors units (where you sacrifice speed, or range, or both, to add sensors). Should not alert a sensors boat that saw an enemy ship, if that ship is beyond its reach that turn?
- How about the units you sent to a certain destination, then changed their stance to Sentry? They just detected an enemy ship 20 hexes away, but they have only 2 moves left. Do they go to sleep?
And so on. It is easy to think the Sentry stance for units with quite similar, fixed speed and line of sight. But in this game the sensors and engines are just equipment, and you may create units with 5 and units with 50 sensors range. You may create units with speed of 5 or 50 moves/turn, regardless the sensors' range. Say you managed to establish the base behaviour for a sentry, but the range of these values is crazy. What would be a good compromise, to make everybody happy? And say you did that too - something like 'a unit becomes active if an enemy unit has been detected x tiles away from it'. But what would be a 'generally good x tiles distance' from the enemy units? Because, again - you may play on Small, where 30 tiles would be too long, or Ludicrous, where it might be too short. Also, early game a 20 tiles warning might be enough, but late game, when war fleets move 100 tiles/turn, would be useless.
To implement a Sentry mechanic in this game requires a novel approach (don't know, maybe make it or limit it to a ship role) and I hope we'll have that, but I won't hold my breath.
I don't see why this would be difficult to implement - when an enemy ship appears in its sensor range, the unit should wake up. I think Gal Civ II had a sentry function and I don't recall it not working.
True! FOREIGN ship, you are quite right. Freaking Stardock, saying one thing and doing another.
Yeah it needs to be ENEMY ships. Sigh.
Further clarification.
Your suggestion:
- I have 2 ships, 200 hexes apart. One has 5 hexes line of sight, the other, my sensor surveillance station, 200. An enemy ship appears between my 2 ships, 6 hexes from the first one, which, although in danger, WON'T wake up. Instead, my second ship, almost 200 hexes away, WAKES UP. First ship dies, life is a ♥♥♥♥♥.
My review:
- Thumb down, rage-quit,
Never mind, you already answered this in an earlier comment..
GC3 does NOT work like this. In MY GAMES, for example, on my preferred maps, and depending on the stage of the game (turn 1 or turn 300), this system will be more of an annoyance than something useful. Most of the time I am at war. So, some of my sensor ships (sensor range like 30 early game, or 100 mid-game) will be always active (so I'll change Sentry to Guard very quickly), while the ones without sensors, which could benefit from a detection grid and the auto-activate thing, won't. How is the Sentry thing useful in this case?
Also, I mentioned the starbases before (another example) - my military starbases have a decent detection radius. But a fleet without sensors, stationed inside or nearby, will never become active, even if a hundred transport ships will pass by, because although detected, they didn't enter its OWN sensor range. Now, at least, with shared lines of sight, everything becomes active and I am forced to review each case. Which is tedious, but safer. I don't want to trade a better principle for a lesser one. Do you?
You assume that everybody plays like you, and what works for you should work for everyone else. But this is a highly customizable game, and the game mechanics should work for everybody, not only a select few. And this makes any adjustment of rules complicated.