Late for a Patrol

[MrBledsoe]

Hi All,

In my first career patrol. I stayed to long on station (had some great target opportunities) and I was I guess "late" to my next station (the orange turned to grey before I got there). I've been at the new station over 72 hours with no new orders. Is this a bug or am I being punished for my tardiness.

Thanks,

George.

[fireftr18]

Are you saying the next patrol assignment greyed out? That seems strange to me. Can you give more details? Can you post a pic so that we can see what happened?

[Armistead]

Never heard of a station turning grey before you arrived. The trigger to activate the timer is you getting into the zone, so not sure what is up.

[Stealhead]

A little more information would useful are you running any mods and what was the specific order?

My assumption is the he got the patrol X area order with the binoculars inside the star in that case if he spent the allotted time in that area the star would have grayed out.Or he may have recived the deploy to X location and then the seek shipping order which would have grayed out upon sinking of the required tonnage.

He must have interrupted that as being "late".

The basic rule MrBledsoe is when you get a patrol area order you must proceed to that star draw a 200 mile radius circle around the center of the star and patrol that location for approx 40 hours or so and the order will be completed.You actually do not have to sink any ships to complete this order and if you go outside of the radius the time stops counting down even if you are pursuing a target.

If you get an order that tells you to proceed to a location and stand by for further orders you must travel to the marker then you will receive an order telling you to seek out shipping in the area.(in fact you can go anywhere) With this order there is a hidden value of tonnage you must sink for the order to complete usually it is around 7,000 tons or two average sized ships.With this order you must sink ships once you get the hidden tonnage the order is complete.As I said you can go anywhere with this order type so if they have you down in the Marshalls which is not usually target rich you can cruise all the way to Japanese waters to meet the quota.

Ultimately you get the most renown for sinking ships not completing orders so if you find yourself in a dry area just free hunt get some tonnage and go home.

Lastly once you complete an order you must send in a radio report in order to receive a new order.Alternately you can complete the original order and then free hunt without requesting orders.I usually do the later.

[MrBledsoe]

OK, great info. Thanks.

I think I'll just return to Pearl now :D

[Redmane]

It could be that your next assignment was a deployment rather than a patrol area. The map icon for patrol has binoculars in the star, the deployment icon has a flag. When approaching a deployment location the icon will grey out before you reach it, and you should receive a message updating your mission objectives. If none of this applies, then I'm not able to help further, sorry.:hmmm:

[TorpX]

What is the nature of the "deployment" mission? Just go there and sink stuff?

[fireftr18]

When you are assigned to a patrol, you get one of two options. I forget how they're worded in the orders. You can tell on the marker stars because one has a flag and the other a binoculars.
When you get the flag, all you have to do is arrive. When you get into the patrol zone, you'll get new orders that will say something like, "Sink enemy shipping."
When you get the binoculars, you need to stay inside the patrol zone for a certain amount of time. In stock, I think it's a 50nm radius. Mods change the radius. If you leave the patrol zone, the timer stops, then start over when you back in the zone.