SENTRY action

[Davin]

The SENTRY action is designed to move a ship (or fleet) from system to
system to system in a regular pattern. This allows a ship to watch
for scouts in multiple places (in turn). A PATROL is designed to sit
in a single star system without moving around.

But it has come to my attention that the SENTRY command allows you to
specify only ONE location in its list of stars to visit. This is
counter to the usual plan of moving from place to place every turn,
but I don't see this as much more than a conceptual issue.

So, question... Should sentries be allowed to have no route at all,
just go to a specific location and stay there?

[Hobbit]

I always thought sentry allowed for multiple locations. When it got
to the last location it went to the first location on the list. If you
wanted to use one location for sentry you can, but in that case
wouldn't patrol work? But I do have a question. Which one has the
highest percentage chance of catching a scouting ship?

[Davin]

You thought correctly. I was asking if a single location should be
permitted in the command. A single-location SENTRY works like a
PATROL only it allows you to move into a system from elsewhere while
doing it. I wasn't sure that should be permitted. But then again,
I'm not sure that's much of a problem, either. So I thought I'd ask
the players what they thought.

According to the combat system code, a PATROL has a certain percentage
change of catching a SCOUT. A SENTRY has the same base percentage,
but the SCOUT then gets an additional percentage chance of dodging the
SENTRY to keep out of sight. So the net effect is that PATROLs have a
little bit better chance of catching a SCOUT than SENTRies do, but it
depends on the speed of the scout ship. For the cheap little scouts
there isn't any practical difference.