This article explains how to use the ‘Cerritos’ automation mode in the FastTrek Star Trek® Fleet Command Bot.

Background

The USS Cerritos from the Lower Decks arc has been around for a while. Every Wednesday there is an event to use it to support ships and hunt hostiles while supported.

So far so boring.

If you’ve long maxed the ship and/or given up on the Wednesday event because it takes too long, or indeed have never managed to complete it for the same reason(!), well, FastTrek can finally offer you some relief.

The first (beta) version of this automation is available in version 1.10.1 of the FastTrek bot for STFC.

How to set up the Cerritos Automation

To get started, assign your Cerritos to a dock, switch to the corresponding tab in FastTrek, and select the Cerritos Support mode.

Your target location can only be another ship. This is the ship you want the Cerritos to support.

You can configure how many times you want the Cerritos to give support. For the Wednesday event you can configure this to be as many times as it takes for you to complete the corresponding SMS event. Note that you may get strange results if you ask it to support more often than you have Irvinite to activate the Cerritos ability!

Optionally, choose if you’d like the target ship to be linked to the status of the Cerritos automation (“Wait for support & recall when done” aka Linked Mode). This selection changes the operation slightly and is explained further down.

At this point you will want to set up the automation for the target ship, i.e. hunting hostiles in some system of your choice, and start it. You can then start the Cerritos immediately after or as the target ship warps to its destination.

If your Cerritos is in a dock that comes after the target ship, you can start both paused and then use “Start All”.

If the target ship is still warping when the Cerritos automation starts, FastTrek will smartly fly it directly to the same system instead of waiting for the target ship to arrive first.

Linked Mode explained

When you enable Linked Mode by selecting “Wait for support & recall when done”, this is what happens:

• The target ship will not attack any hostiles unless it has Cerritos support.
• The target ship will repair and repeat indefinitely, until the Cerritos is done.
• When the Cerritos is recalled, the target ship will continue to attack until support runs out and then recall and repair.
• If you pause the target ship, the Cerritos Automation will not pause. It will continue to support the target ship when support runs out.
• If you pause the Cerritos Automation, the target ship will continue as if unlinked (see below). The link is reestablished when you resume the Cerritos Automation.

Without linked mode:

• The target ship will continually attack hostiles, including in the beginning while the Cerritos might not yet be on station, or when support runs out. There may therefore be some moments when it will be unsupported.
• The target ship has its own recall conditions, so it might end up recalling before the Cerritos, which will cause problems. It will be your responsibility to choose suitable conditions to prevent this from happening.
• When the Cerritos is recalled, the target ship will continue to hunt until its own recall conditions trigger.
• Pausing either automation has no effect whatsoever on the other.

So when might you choose not to link them? Probably when FastTrek has your ship out grinding long-term anyway and you just want to piggy-back the Cerritos onto it. If you’re sending the target ship out for the sole purpose of doing the event every Wednesday, you are likely better off with linked mode.