NewB asks about automated surveillance

[sgvinvestor]

I know most of you win before the modern era, but would you like do see automated surveillance (including fighters from stationary carriers)? i.e. set a point in space to survey and the plane will keep surveying that point. Thanks for opinion

[Supr49er]

I always thought you should be able to do some kind of surveillance once you get satellites. Why can't you build and launch satellites and program them to scout/spy on your enemies?

[Supr49er]

Oh, just noticed this is your first post.

Welcome to the Apolyton Forums sgvinvestor!

[rah]

Yeah, a patrol command for air, sea and land units would be great.

[Ari]

A standing order to have an air unit run a surveillance mission. God, I'd love to see that. Half the time I simply can't be bothered to keep monitoring my coasts for incomings because it's too much of a chore to manually order the damn thing each and every turn.

[ben_vii]

Totally agree.

[Kuciwalker]

YES. THIS WOULD BE FANTASTIC.

[Cyrus The Mike]

It would be nice if I could see incoming attacks.

[Tattila the Hun]

Seconded, or thirded, or whatever. It would also be nice, if my modern oil-based navy could see further than my galleys... Should they not have radar or something? Or atleast binoculars? Seems silly to spend a promotion on sentry.

Though, now that I think of it, I think it is possible to queue surveillance missions, holding, shift I think. One by one, get's tedious.

[Ming]

A tedious solution is no solution. I would want something easy, like a one step patrol command.

I'm surprised the play testers didn't demand one

[snoopy369]

The real problem with that is the timing. When do you want your aircraft to do the surveillance?

A. Beginning of turn - then you can't turn it off for that turn to react to a need. Also, queued orders are as of now done after all units have been cycled through once (essentially at end of turn).

B. Middle of turn - when in the middle? This is a no go because it is undefined time-wise, and that doesn't work.

C. End of turn - after you've already cycled through any units you'd be using? That's more clicks than just doing the surveillance manually would take (hitting w,w,w,w,w,w,w,w for a whole stack). This is the only truly possible solution, however; A and B don't mesh with Civ's programming.

There could be some potential benefit from including a repeated survey command, but having it only happen at the end of the unit cycles just isn't that useful from a reducing MM point of view (the point of any automation). If it were possible - and it's certainly moddable in python - I doubt many of you would actually use it once it was done...

[Ming]

For aircraft, it would be no problem if you did it at the beginning of the turn so that you could identify threats.
And yes, I would want one that was repeated every turn until turned off or changed. This way, you could react to what you see with other units. (I would hope you had other aircraft/ships standing by to actually respond to a found threat)

[snoopy369]

Beginning doesn't work, both because it's not how Civ processes the turn, and because it would be more of a net harm to take away the aircraft's movement.

I certainly think it could have been done, but because of the caveats of actual implementation I suspect it wouldn't have been worth the time, compared to some other feature/features they would have had to not include... not to mention more bugs

[Ming]

You could be given an option at the beginning of your turn to initiate all patrol missions. And yes, it would take away their movement, but you wouldn't have to assign ALL your aircraft or ships to patrol missions. This would allow you to see where the potential invaders are while still having a chance to respond to them with other units. I would have no problem allocating a part of my navy or airforce to patrol only missions.

[Kuciwalker]

I'd rather have it be done at the beginning of the turn then manually.