Two things were wrong and the second was the real one. A ring is not what a
picket does - but each step around it was shorter than Ship's arrive_radius,
so every frame the vessel SNAPPED onto its target and zeroed its velocity,
and Ship only turns to face a heading while it is actually moving. The
result slid around the outpost pointing whichever way it had spawned.
So: real destinations, far enough apart to be flown to. The vessel picks a
point somewhere in its patrol area, flies there, pauses, and picks another.
A leg is never shorter than wander_min_leg, which is what keeps the
snap-and-stop from coming straight back, and a leg that cannot be reached
times out rather than stranding the picket.
Breaking off a fight now starts a fresh leg from where the fight ended,
rather than flying back to a waypoint chosen before it began.
Measured: 485px of wander, 46-271px from its post, up to 690px/s, pointing
where it was going for 88% of its travel. The test measures that facing as a
FRACTION rather than a worst instant - a vessel just given a new heading is
legitimately still swinging onto it at its own rotation_speed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A garrisoned vessel circles its post, engages what comes into range, and
goes back to circling. It steers by writing move_target and lets Ship's own
steering fly it, so it accelerates, banks and brakes exactly like a vessel
in the formation.
It is not in Fleet.ships. It does not follow the formation, does not count
against max_fleet_size(), and does not move when the player flies away -
which is the whole point of stationing it. A garrison that ate a fleet slot
would mean stationing a vessel cost the player a place in their own wedge.
The leash is the load-bearing part. Enemies are judged from the POST rather
than from the vessel, so a garrison that has drifted out to its leash cannot
see further still and be walked away from its outpost one enemy at a time,
and an engagement is clamped to a circle around the post rather than to a
straight line, so it still manoeuvres while pinned.
The orbit starts from where the vessel actually is rather than a random
bearing. A random one makes the first move_target a point on the far side of
the circle, and the vessel flies straight across the middle - through the
outpost it is guarding.
EnemyTargets.nearest_ship now searches the player_ships GROUP instead of
Fleet.ships: an enemy that ignored the guns shooting at it, because they
were not in the player's formation, would let a garrison hold a position
without ever being fought back.
The laser vessel is deliberately not garrisonable. Firing the laser lives in
LaserController, a fleet ability driven by the laser button, rather than in
VesselLaserComponent - so a garrisoned laser would hold its position and
never shoot, and offering a vessel that cannot fight is worse than a short
list.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
