Does "Guard" N "Sentry" work..?

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!

I think the point of the commands is to stop the ships showing up in the move list, so you don't have to keep skipping their turns when you want to leave them in one spot. With sentry, they should reactivate when enemies come into range. With guard, they should sit tight even when warships are in sight. I wouldn't like having ships rush into battles before I can check the odds myself.

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 understand the concept...
I only wish that when a ship wakes up some popup opens, or it could be that the ship flashes or changes colour.

i wish they would STAY in the mode i choose.

I agree with markos2 and S31Apoc, but i think that the whole idea isnt carried through all the way.
Since its takes less time and is much esier to just uncheck the "toggle ships with moves left" button.
Both guard and sentry are worthless since you rely on notification from the CPU on enemy contact,
a notification that never comes, so why even bother implementing an guard/sentry - function if you have to babysit every ship even though you pressed that darned button....

But dont get me wrong, i LOVE this game, i just cant seem to understand why stardock was in such a rush releasing it...there are obvious still many basic things that needs to be corrected, and by that i dont meen the gameplay or concept. like how some people suggest adding controlled combat etc etc.
Just a simple yet important things such as Sentrying or Gurading.....

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.

Guard and sentry work exactly as advertised. Sentry look for ships within its sensor range for any other civ's ships, and guard does the same for ships from any civ you are at war with. If none of those ships come into sensor range, they sit there and don't require you to give it orders every turn. If used properly, it actually saves a great deal of time.

If you set your ships to guard or sentry, and feel that they aren't 'staying there', it is because other ships are flying into thier sensor range that meet your set criteria, and will then 'wake up', and force you to make a decision on what to do. Fantastic watch dogs!

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.

its just stupid since with sentry available then guard is redundant

No, it's not. Guard and Sentry do different things.

If I remember correctly...

When set to 'Sentry' a ship will reactivate when any ship from another race comes into sensor range.

When set to 'Guard' a ship will only reactivate when an enemy ship (ie, one from a race you are at war with) comes into sensor range.

I'm afraid you may be reading far more into the name of the command than is intended. While it would be very nice in many situations to have commands that allowed you to choose which fleet in a 'stack' is attacked, that's not the way the game currently works.

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.

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.

Knute, your definition of Guard is different than Stardocks, with relation to this game. Guard is supposed to wake up your ship when an enemy appears and you take over. How you expect that function to force another player to attack that target first is beyond me. The closest I can interpret your expectation is to have the ship not only wake up, but to auto attack as well. I'm sure you'd find some fault with it if that was the case: ie, That's not the fleet it was supposed to attack! And that is why Stardock decided to alert you an enemy was within scanner range, giving you an opportunity to evaluate your response.

I don't know why people are confused about the properties of the Sentry and Guard functions. Their operation is so simple I find it difficult to see how people are reading into them more than exists.

While the Wiki site does not have entries for guard and sentry, I did find these definitions:

A sentry is a guard that is focused on watching over an area of land. Sentries are important in alerting cities of oncoming attacks. Sentry duties Stay in one location and watch an area of land... guard, or a nearby citizen

A guard is an individual who is assigned to watch over or protect something.


Obviously a guard in GC2 "watches over" as does a sentry. Their difference lies in what reactivates them. If used properly they are very usefull tools.

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.

Guard is supposed to wake up your ship when an enemy appears and you take over. How you expect that function to force another player to attack that target first is beyond me. The closest I can interpret your expectation is to have the ship not only wake up, but to auto attack as well. I'm sure you'd find some fault with it if that was the case: ie, That's not the fleet it was supposed to attack! And that is why Stardock decided to alert you an enemy was within scanner range, giving you an opportunity to evaluate your response.

not at all. actualy i was thinking of how the guard feature used to work in the old civilization and alpha centaur games. when you put a unit on guard in a given square then taht unit was allways the first unit to be attacked in the event an enemy attacked that square.

this isnt rocket science here. if i put 10 people on guard outside my house (or square if you will) and someone trys to come into my house (square) then my guards defend that house (square) with force.

im not in the least bit suggesting that units on guard should TAKE action and launch an auto attack im only saying that , as common sence would dictate, that a unit on guard would be the prime defender of what ever square you have them guarding.

A sentry is a guard that is focused on watching over an area of land. Sentries are important in alerting cities of oncoming attacks. Sentry duties Stay in one location and watch an area of land... guard, or a nearby citizen A guard is an individual who is assigned to watch over or protect something.

eggs ackaly as ive stated they should function.

ships on sentry duty are mearly pickets assigned to scan an area and alert you to any movment, a guard is responcable for protecting a given square.

obviously, as you have said, this isnt the way the game works. and as ive said, its either a design bug, or a redundant piece of stupidity. the ability to have a ship tell me that anyone is moving into a sector or that ONLY an enemy is moving into a sector is of far less value than being able to tap a given set of units to be the primary defenders (guards) of a given square as the very term GUARD implys.

and in either case, and im sure that all of you, even those that are 'debating' this aspect would agree, that being able to have ships actualy GUARD a given square and become its primary defenders would be of more value by FAR than any combination of usless sentry functions.

i have yet to find any real use for a ship on sentry except in one instiance , when i am 'camping' a given planet with a fleet , destroying its defenders untill my troop ships can arrive.

on the other hand in almost every single game ive had a situation where i want to be able to decide what fleet would be the default guard in a given square. and since every 4X game ive ever played had this ability for units, i dont think that im being overly critical or unrealistic when i point out its lack in this one.

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.

eggs ackaly as ive stated they should function. ships on sentry duty are mearly pickets assigned to scan an area and alert you to any movment, a guard is responcable for protecting a given square.

You are ignoring the part of the text that says "...watch over OR protect something..." With my follow up that in GC2, their function is to "watch over"

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

Thank you for wording that nicer than I was going to. And at the risk of sounding like a flame response, this is GC2.. NOT alpha centari, NOT civilization, NOT every other 4x game you've played.... it's called Galactic Civilizations II.

Since it is a different game, they reserve the right to do things differently. Once again:

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

With out a doubt, you are welcome to your opinions, but to call the Sentry and Guard functions "stupid" because you don't agree with how they are intended to work is just as, if not more, "stupid."

Don't use them and be happy.

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

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.

Alright genius then what would the proper terms be for the described actions? And if you think the English language is clear then you don't live on the same planet as the rest of us. Ask someone who is trying to learn English as a second language how *clear* it is.

And I really hate to do this but since you don't like their definition try these.

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

Ok so it's the 5th entry and the first one they list is a synonym for *defend* which is what you want. But right there is a valid use of the word and exactly what Stardock did.

From Dictionary.com for sentry:
n : a person employed to watch for something to happen

Again sounds like a reasonable use of the word and describes precisely what occurs in the game.

Now if you stop to think for more then a few seconds you'd realize that it makes sense to have guard watch for an enemy and sentry watch for anything. But then I guess us *fanboys* are the only ones that actually understand what is going on. Could they have maybe described them better in the manual? Possible. But I guess there are some of us on the planet that have better things to do with our time then worry about this type of nonsense which is nothing more then complaining just to complain. So get over yourself.

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.

Ah see now I've got ya ... the action taken is that the ship notifies me that an enemy has come into its sphere of influence and it is awaiting my orders on what to do. A security guard does not engage the bad guys he just calls the cops. But it does not show a lack of polish or that the game was not finished. I've said it before and will repeat it again. Just because you think it should work a different way does not mean that the way they implemented it is wrong. I'll tell you what when you write your own game you get to decide how everything will work and how it will be described. And I'm sure people will point out that you are wrong and obviously don't even have the grasp of the English language that a 4 year old does.

Just because it was the fifth listing for the word doesn't mean it is less right then the first four. It just goes to show you how unclear the English language as a whole really is.

Of course we can probably post 100 times about this each and neither is ever going to concede the others point. Therefore as you stated nothing more to be said and we'll just agree to disagree.

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.

A patrol option would be nice, where you could have ships patrolling either a sector, or your boundries. They'd just doodle along until either an alien ship comes into range, or an enemy ship comes into range.

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

Yup a patrol option where you could set 'waypoints'would be a nice addition!

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.