I'm going to say no, used both of these commands on two different ships and when the enemy came in range, all that happen was they un-checked the boxes and didnt even move!

From what I understand from the manual (which must of course be taken with a pinch of salt), ships on Sentry will wait until they see any ships from other civs, and then the sentry order will be cancelled. Guard works the same way, except they will only snap out of it if they spot a ship from a race you are at war with.

The point is that when you are then cycling through the ships on your turn, you will be snapped to the sentry/guard fleet, and can decide what action to take against the detected opponent.

i wish they would STAY in the mode i choose.

Worthless? How do you figure?

When I've got aggresive civs that I'm not yet at war with I put all my stationary scouts/sensor freighters on sentry so that I can keep track of any moves the civ is making.....the ship will 'wake up' when any other ship is in sensor range. Guard is the same thing, except for civs you are at war with. Works fine for me, a ship wakes and then I find whatever woke it up....which, lately, always seems to be the damn Yor.

seems to me that if you put a warship on guard at , say a starbase, then taht warship should be the default target for the square under attack. that isnt so.

when i think of guard i think of , well, GUARDING something, a starbase, another fleet of ships, a given point in space for what ever reason but that isnt the case.

if i have a fleet of mega gun ships and i want them to guard a sector full of constructors, it should follow that my fleet on guard should be the first set of ships selected in any combat. they arent, and it would seem to either be A) an unfinished aspect that should actualy work as ive described, or if its NOT unfinished and actualy working 'as intended' then its just stupid since with sentry available then guard is redundant not to mention confusing as seen by the number of threads that have made referance to this very question.

I would love it when I place a fleet on top of a starbase and hit guard, that it would actually do that. I don't know how many times I have been attacked and have had my starbase destroyed before my ships every get attacked. I would think that if my ships are guarding something like that they would be able to fight with the thing they are guarding, not wait till its destroyed to even get the change.

I think Starbases should have logistic points like everything else so you actually can have somw kind of defense because late game fleets will take out any starbase.

Sentry - Your ship is no longer in your "need to move" queue until any passing ship is spotted

Guard - Your ship is no longer in your "need to move" queue until any enemy passing ship is spotted.

Note, by passing I mean "it moved." If the opposing ship doesn't move but you can still see it, it doesn't deactivate sentry or guard (useful because sometimes starbases or some such are in range).

Sentry and Guard always deactivate when the condition above is met so that they show up in the "need to move" queue again, which indicates to you that they spotted something. These are both very useful commands (guard more so I think), but they aren't explained well in game.

Working as intended. May not be what some people *think* it should be but that doesn't make the implementation wrong.

And for the record there is an *auto attack* option though to be honest I've never used it.

It really would be nice if Stardock would add a third option along with *Sentry* and *Guard* called *Hey don't do anything until I click you again*. Basically what others have requested that the ship in that state completely ignores the universe until I want it to do something.

perhaps the issue here stems from the wording used to describe the functions.

i can understand that there would be two different sentry functions, one for general and one for enemy. but by wording the sentry function for enemy and calling it guard it causes this debate.

a guard is not ONLY a sentry, though the dutys of a sentry is part of being a guard. a guard also defend what its 'watching over' unlike a pure sentry.

now i know that you fan boys get your jollys from defending *snicker* or guarding , if you will, games you like. i too really enjoy this game. but calling a spade a spade doesnt mean im anti anything.

i will take the blaim for my wording. perhaps stupid is a bit too harsh. though it does seem stupid to me. then again i speak and understand the english language rather well so to me the words guard and sentry have individual and DIFFERENT meanings. and when they are used wrong, atleast in reguards to the American English language that i speak then i have to wonder at the root cause. now perhaps im wrong in my assumption that stardock was an American company and thus understood the difference between guard and sentry. maybe they Arent an American company and english isnt their first language, if so themy my remarks about stupidity they have my heart felt appology.

other than that, its stupid to call a second level sentry function, a guard, game or no game, they can i suppose "reserve the right to do things differently" but in that case then it would be nice of them to tell the consumer what version of the English language we will have to read from when trying to understand their meaning for basic terms such as guard and sentry. since its clear by the very fact taht people have felt compelled to both post questions on this topic and respond to the questions of this topic.

the issue is here, someone is wrong, the English language is clear on what those setting should mean as well, the fault lies with stardocks inability to use the proper terms for their design and misslead peoples expectations.

and fianly, if the C&C of Iraq, used stardocks terms, and told the 4th ID to 'guard' bagdad. then the war would have been over by now, and WE would have been the loosers, since guards who stand there and do nothing while the target they are guarding comes under attack arent guards at all but rather ........... well ............. sentrys

From Dictionary.com for guard: 5) To supervise entry or exit through; keep watch at: guarded the door

and now i suppose we would need to define supervise right?

the implication of the word 'supervise' would mean if anything was out of line then the person supervising would take action, such as attack the thing being supervised right?

its no accident that you had to dig to the 5th definition, and even that implys that action would be taken by the watcher by its use of the word supervise.

it is somewhat of a minor flaw, and just an example in the game that lacks polish, i suspect that it was actualy intended as a real guard function as i have outlined and for what ever reason just wasnt finished. or rather ill give them the benifit of the doubt anyhow.

but as to the use of the word guard im right, its being used improperly to describe the ships functions when implimented, they arent guarding anything they are performing a selective sentry function. no more need be said.

I find that many times throughout the game I could do with a auto retreat button as I leave scouts on sentry to lighten up the way. So it would be a handy thing if the enemy came within range that the scout retreated instead of just sitting there waiting to die.

Personally i always use the guard and sentry modes for my ships. Later in the game i send scouts over towards the various AI's territory and leave them there to 'spy' on the AI's. Doing this i always set the ship to 'Sentry' so i can move it out of the AI's territory before it gets a good look at the ship and decides i have invaded its borders and declares war on me.

NB. I always max out on sensors so i can see theAI's but not the other way round

As for the guard command, i set my defending ships in my territory with the guard command selected. Any AI ships that i am at war with come into range and i am made aware of this immediately. This way i have a few more turns to decide whether to annihilate them or if they are just 'passing through'.

I have been using this tactic since the early days of GC1 and still find it the most effective way of 'defending' areas of the map.

BTW the sentry command is also useful early on in the game if you happen to find a good resource. Set the scout to sentry and it will alert you if a constructor or other ship from an AI comes into range. Can save time by not taking long turns to reach the resource only to find out the AI has i already

DG

I've never found a use for either myself. I like to zoom all the way out before I hit the turn button and that way I can easily see any suspicious movement and deal with it as needed. Sometimes I'll play the whole game zoomed out as the game is often a lot easier to manage with the icons representing things rather than the graphical models.