AutoPilot

[Mighty]

{Intro}This isn't something new or hasn't been said before. I see 3-5 month old threads on this so I figured i'd start this up. Just going to explain why i think you should have an extremely basic autopilot system. If anyone else has ideas that go further then what im suggesting, which im sure you will, post it here!

{Idea}Autopilot - Simply let us press a button that keeps the thrusters going.... Thats it.

{Where is the need?}In my opinion, we are in space! these are high tech ships and they don't even have a system to, keep the engines running without manually pressing down the throttle. Every person i talk too in game, says the same thing "WHY CAN'T I AUTO PILOT". a 45 minute journey to some star system without jump modules is a tough thing to do. Luckily many people i know improvise. I use a philips head screw driver pressing down my w key. My friend uses a 6 sided die and his phone, another uses a toy dinosaur to hold down the w key.

You get the idea that just about everyone in game wants an auto-pilot system, and or made up their own way to get an auto-pilot to work.

Now a further expansion of this idea would be to make a block that is an autopilot block. You can set up the coordinates and click fly! or some button and It will redirect you to that way point and start flying. Even this is a pretty basic auto-pilot and its the only thing i'd want in game.

That's my simple auto-pilot ideas. just a basic "auto run/pilot". I'm sure anyone reading my post could expand and give ideas for a much more complex autopilot system and i encourage you to do so. Thanks for reading.

 

[keylan118]

{Intro}This isn't something new or hasn't been said before. I see 3-5 month old threads on this so I figured i'd start this up. Just going to explain why i think you should have an extremely basic autopilot system. If anyone else has ideas that go further then what im suggesting, which im sure you will, post it here!

{Idea}Autopilot - Simply let us press a button that keeps the thrusters going.... Thats it.

{Where is the need?}In my opinion, we are in space! these are high tech ships and they don't even have a system to, keep the engines running without manually pressing down the throttle. Every person i talk too in game, says the same thing "WHY CAN'T I AUTO PILOT". a 45 minute journey to some star system without jump modules is a tough thing to do. Luckily many people i know improvise. I use a philips head screw driver pressing down my w key. My friend uses a 6 sided die and his phone, another uses a toy dinosaur to hold down the w key.

You get the idea that just about everyone in game wants an auto-pilot system, and or made up their own way to get an auto-pilot to work.

Now a further expansion of this idea would be to make a block that is an autopilot block. You can set up the coordinates and click fly! or some button and It will redirect you to that way point and start flying. Even this is a pretty basic auto-pilot and its the only thing i'd want in game.

That's my simple auto-pilot ideas. just a basic "auto run/pilot". I'm sure anyone reading my post could expand and give ideas for a much more complex autopilot system and i encourage you to do so. Thanks for reading.

First time using this :D

 

[karkinosz]

A jury rigged push passive system + logic can cause a ship to move forward without player input. Although thats only a hold over until we can get something like autopilot, or maybe even just throttle control.

 

[nightwalker_007]

This should be implemented as a computer tied to the ship core, which is activated when walking inside the ship as an astronaut. Activate the computer, set in a a location to travel to, set a few options (e.g. select which jump drive computers should be activated by the auto-pilot), and now wander around your ship enjoying the sights through all those pretty windows you added.

Even better, would be to add a new attribute to the display to display autopilot information, such as: [destination] [eta]. which will show such information or (inactive) if the autopilot has completed it's navigation (it should be smart enough not to fly or jump through a star, and optionally jump away from detected hostiles). I'd love to be able to jump into a nav computer, give it a destination, then go wander about my ship, peeking through windows, or maybe even performing tasks inside the ship, like manufacturing, or just hanging out on chat. Great feature for factory ships.

This will, of course, require that my suggestion http://starmadedock.net/threads/res...tive-position-to-entered-entity-on-exit.8064/ is also implemented.

I'd love to see the ability for an advanced module to be able to dock with an entity as well, but I'll settle for just getting close to an entity.

 

[Keptick]

While I certainly agree that it would be a usefull feature there are some alternatives (in no particular order):

1. The tip of a spoon on the W key (a heavy marble works too on some keyboards)
2. A keyboard macro.
3. Jump drives (I strongly recommend this one)
4. Setting 0 dampening in server settings, meaning that things never slow down.

 

[Lidren]

So, there's a problem here. I love the idea of autopilot. Especially say, Bobby ai with the ability to give it destination and aggression level. The down side to having autopilot or turning off slowdown, is that a server can be crashed currently if someone just points in a direction and goes (and survives to travel far, not hitting a rock and tumbling off course into a star)

Servers need a built in way to limit the universe by the time we have autopilot. Having random mob spawns on while also traveling crashes the server even faster, though scheduled cleanups done often mitigate this somewhat.

 

[Valiant70]

• The tip of a spoon on the W key (a heavy marble works too on some keyboards)

• A keyboard macro.

Yuck.

Jump drives (I strongly recommend this one)

These have other problems. They still cause finger pain, which can't be solved by weighting a button. I just want to yell "Ahead warp factor 2!" and go get a snack instead of spending five minutes mashing mouse buttons. The implementation of FTL was supposed to be somewhat inclusive of all sci-fi franchises, but I don't actually know of any franchise that is easily replicated by the FTL options we have right now. EVE online... kinda - sorta? We have jump gates, but we have jump drives instead of warp drives.

Setting 0 dampening in server settings, meaning that things never slow down.

This should be default, and we should have a parking brake for unoccupied ships. :P Talk about popular suggestions.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Push drives work decently, you don't even need that many to make a workable system, as long as you aren't in a hurry.