Navigation (autopilot)

[jijiji]

Hello!

I understand that game is currently alpha. But the absence of the below-mentioned makes the game much more difficult for me. And I think that this suggestions will have enough priority soon to be implemented.

Here is the suggestions which should improve navigation and add an advanced autopilot. I've seen something about it on forums, but collected the best as I think. I might be wrong, but I you can discuss and suggest anything too.

[Navigation GUI]

It would be great if navigation panel will have more information about objects:

• Absolute speed, m/s.
• Relative speed, m/s.
• Radial speed, rad/s.
• Target size, sr.
• Window must be configurable.
• And something about.

So players will be able to get more information about objects. It's little implementation with big effect.

[Autopilot]

I suggests to add an autopilot able to do some actions. They must be allowed in the object's context menu in the navigation window. List of actions:

1. Move to an object.
2. Keep distance to the object.
3. Orbit the object.
4. Choose facing to the object. This is most important point as I think, because some ships have turrets placed on their sides and can't fire forward. So default front facing will disallow them to fire. List of possible facings:
   • Front/rear.
   • Left/right.
   • Top/bottom.
   • Or choosing angles (for example down to 15 degrees and 25 degrees to the right).
   • They should be multichoosable.
5. Toggle autopilot.
6. Run away from the object (unnecessary, the same as keep infinity distance).
7. Dock (unnecessary).

That's not hard to implement, but will make big effect, as I think. Speed controlling would be great too.

[Firing forward]

This is unnecessary little suggestion. I suggest you to change mouse weapon adjusting to a central aim, like missiles. That's because of while you have to turn extremely fast and hit some target at the same time, you can't do it. Because to turn you have to move mouse to edge, but to fire you need to aim mouse at target. Of course you can use logic to fire at front, but it needs blocks and missiles still require to lock on the target (and they will fire apart if you're turning fast to keep target locked). Also, big ships can change firing direction too fast.

Of course you can leave focusing of weapon, but this suggestion will make game more dynamical.

If you don't want to do it, you can limit (or make configurable) max angle of beam offset (for example to 5 degrees). But I still think that firing forward is better then mouse adjusting.



So, suggestions above should add more dynamics, control and fun to the game. Manual orbiting is very hard to do, but autopilot doing orbit around enemy would be great allow fast ships to avoid slow turrets. Would be great if you say that you think about it.

Soon I will add a suggestion to make it more completed.