Advanced auto-pilot system

[Master Dwrety]

Dear FD developers

So far the automatic docking computer saves a lot of effort for me to navigate through stations and I think I couldn't live without it. It's definitely a great module in terms of making commanders' life easier. Since the release of ED, I strongly think that auto-pilot or quick-travel through the galaxy is necessary. I live quite a busy life and I found most of my game experience is just jumping through systems and fuel scooping. This can sometimes be fun, especially during exploration, but most of the time it's time consuming and tedious. This does add up to my time of gameplay but I feel like it is not good for my health and totally unnecessary.

I have several suggestions:

1) the docking computer is so useful, yet so limited by its function. For example, I have to sacrifice a 4 class module slot for it in my Anaconda if I have an exploration setup. Just like the D-scanner, make it an integrated module or Please Make it More Powerful!!! Things like automatic departure from stations, auto-pilot and automatic refueling are all very nice features.

2) Still, auto-pilot can be very helpful. Let's say that I want to travel to a known system and it requires dozens of jumps. It could easily take up to 20min for me to actually travel there. If I can spare 1 hour per day for gaming, I will have to spend most of my time traveling. Wing missions are terrible because I have to make sure that all my friends have at least 2 or 3 hours because we need to spend 1 hour traveling and it is not fun. I believe it is definitely not the best part of this game, and I certainly believe that simple things like auto-navigation in the year 3300 should not be that difficult. Like I said, please make this achievable by advanced computer or by on board crew members. You can certainly make this only available in fully explored systems or visited systems.

3) One problem is that how to deal with piracy and military interruptions in the system. I also understand that some players will probably write scripts to make tons of credits by stacking passenger missions if you are going to work on auto-pilot. So you have to figure a way to balance that as well. But anyways, I strongly suggested this feature.

 

[trollson]

As per usual for this type of suggestion.

In a game about flying a space ship, you want to not have to fly a space ship?

 

[DarthVain]

Nothing wrong with the suggestion.

 

[Dark-War-Greymon]

If they ever implement space legs and the ability to let go of the yoke and leave the cockpit, auto pilot is imperative. Maybe a wrist computer (not pip boy, something small and basic) could let you change auto pilot modes like attack, defend, or engage fsd to a random system. Looking journeys especially to bodies 150k LS to 200k+ LS can become tedious, but space legs and auto pilot would be a great asset. Auto pilot alone though in deep space there isn't much to do other than aim at your target and leave it going unless you get interdicted etc.

 

[777Driver]

As per usual for this type of suggestion.

In a game about flying a space ship, you want to not have to fly a space ship?

Weakest argument ever. A bit like purchasing a commercial airliner flight sim, then expecting to hand fly constantly, those machines are flown 90% on A/P, modern spacecraft are even more heavily automated. You need to get it out of your mind that flying only consists of sitting there holding the stick putting in manual inputs 100% of the time. This isn't a glider simulator .

@OP - Good idea, however bots are a huge problem in this game, I can't see the devs making things easier for those creating bots. A shame really, I spent many years working with advanced automation and guidance systems, could add a lot of depth if implemented correctly into ED.

Personally I'd like to see an FMGS on our ships, ability to plot waypoints, give instructions to the computer to follow various commands, flight path vector on the HUD to either manually follow a course in SC & Normal space, or let the computer follow the path, optimal in system route plotting to take advantage of gravity wells.. The list goes on... Heck even the equivalent of SID/STARS for approaches and departures from stations and surface signals, also for glide (again flown manually or under automation with a flight path vector)

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I personally don't mind if there's an autopilot in game.

I-War was an excellent space game, and that had autopilot for everything.

It should have limitations though, like no fuel scooping, shutting off if anything unusual happens, including flying through a jet cone, or getting mildly confused by something in the way, and doesn't fight or submit to interdictions, it'll just try to keep going.

 

[Lestat]

I have to say no. It caters to Bots and players leaving the game. Because they are NOT playing the game.

 

[varonica]

Nothing wrong with the suggestion.

Combined with the recent rash of requests for mini-jumps it would almost makes Elite one of those AFK tablet mini-games, if every request in this regard I have seen was implemented you could just log in, spend five minutes setting up your missions, walk away or go to work and comeback later to reap all the rewards. I don't see the point of that at all, there are plenty of games around already where you can do that, why shoehorn it into Elite, essentially a spaceship flying game.

 

[varonica]

Weakest argument ever. A bit like purchasing a commercial airliner flight sim, then expecting to hand fly constantly, those machines are flown 90% on A/P, modern spacecraft are even more heavily automated. You need to get it out of your mind that flying only consists of sitting there holding the stick putting in manual inputs 100% of the time. This isn't a glider simulator

So, modern aircraft land and take off and land on autopilot? No of course not, which is exactly the opposite of what we are discussing. Modern aircraft hold course and altitude, take into account drift and wind while flying between points, we already do that, just point your nose at that big yellow circle and walk away if you so desire. Unlike modern aircraft we in fact do get autopilot landing, but not takeoff, so our autopilot is way more advanced than the ones we already have. Come back when passenger jet aircraft are landing and taking off on autopilot and we'll discuss it again.

 

[xxThe_Dice_manxx]

Nope.

 

[dunno]

ability to plot waypoints,

That would require detailed knowledge of ships jump range and the variables which affect the jump range I have no desire to read up all the variables required to plot the next waypoint, butt....why invent the wheel ?, currently all one has to do is select end destination and the course is automatically plotted with all selected variables factored in, its dead easy and simple, tell the computer what you want to do and it plots, and Elite's basic Flight Director (Compass with dot in it) is automatically programmed, Nice

flight path vector on the HUD to either manually follow a course in SC & Normal space, or let the computer follow the path,

Which implies that a from/to course has been programmed in the Nav Computer for the Flight Director, more complexity which most folks who aren't in the aviation industry don't know of, Airline pilots know how to use a Auto Pilot/Flight Director system, can't expect the casual player to learn the sequence of events and programming required to get a Auto Pilot to follow the Flight Director. Who outside the Airline industry knows that the Flight Director has to be programmed by the human with LNAV and VNAV these are then displayed in the ADI via two bars or a chevron bar, and IF the human is Lazy the Auto Pilot can be engaged but it has to be instructed to follow the Flight Director, all the different Auto Pilot modes, man what a can of worms for the casual gamer.

optimal in system route plotting to take advantage of gravity wells.. The list goes on... Heck even the equivalent of SID/STARS for approaches and departures from stations and surface signals, also for glide (again flown manually or under automation with a flight path vector)

a SID is a "Standard Instrument Departure" ans a STAR is "Standard Terminal Arrival Route", perhaps they should contact Jeppeson or one of the many other establishments who publish airport data for Elite SID's and STAR's, again additional complexity which would confound the casual gamer, and yes I know that modern Airliner's have FMS's (Flight Management Systems) which have all the data stored and all the pilot has to do is push a button to activate a SID/STAR which will automatically program the Flight Director, piece of cake, but what would be the point of adding this complexity to the game ?, especially if all one has to do is press a button and it will automatically fly the required flight path ?.

What I would like to see is a method to select active destination when in Super Cruise after other targets have been acquired, currently if the destination is de-selcted one has to dive into the Nav Panel to re-select the destination, it would be nice to have a hot key for Select Current Destination, just like there's a hot key for select Next System on route.

 

[Hawkadium]

I'd like to see a better Auto Pilot system. EVE online offers it and it can be useful on those longer runs. When you dont mind risking the safety of your ship, lol.

 

[varonica]

I'd like to see a better Auto Pilot system. EVE online offers it and it can be useful on those longer runs. When you dont mind risking the safety of your ship, lol.

There's the rub though, I have said on occasion that I am not dead against some of these suggestions, but setting autopilot between stars, between planets and stations should be risky, and I'm not talking about a scratch. There's a reason despite autopilot that every modern aircraft has a pilot, a co-pilot and sometimes more on longer runs, there's always someone sitting in front of the stick. Yes you can have autopilot, but if you get interdicted and attacked by a pirate you are basically dead, if you jump into an un-mapped system while exploring there's a good chance you are going to die. basically an autopilot is something you can run for a while if you need to take an emergency toiler break, or the phone rings, but you basically need to be ready to take over the controls in case, because if anything out of the ordinary happens, you're dead. Personally while exploring in the black if I get called away I just hit zero throttle and nothing happens, it's safe to do that out here, try that in the bubble and you're.......well you all get the idea.

The thing is, if they introduced autopilot on that basis, well the salt, I can taste it now. The inundation of posts asking to make AP safe....I can imagine those also.

What people appear to be asking for with autopilot is exactly that, something they can set so all they have to do take a mission, load up the ship and say, "fly me to Love Station", come back, complete the mission and profit, and that's never going to be acceptable.

 

[dunno]

What people appear to be asking for with autopilot is exactly that, something they can set so all they have to do take a mission, load up the ship and say, "fly me to Love Station", come back, complete the mission and profit, and that's never going to be acceptable.

Indeed. Elite currently has a Flight Director which is fully programmed when a route or plot is set, Imagine how mundane it would be if upon departure one engaged the auto pilot and watched the Flight Director fly to star- around it - Jump to next, to explore 30000Ly, plot route, go to pub.

In a Airliner the function of the auto pilot is to decrease pilot workload but most importantly to control the aircraft during cruise at high altitudes to prevent Dutch Roll and to PRECISELY maintain lateral and vertical Flight Director commands, a human would be able to accurately fly a airliner precisely for about 10 minutes at altitude without any lateral or vertical deviations and forget about manually trying to prevent Dutch Roll, impossible for a human.

The sequence is this, the human programs the Flight Director which in turn commands the Auto Pilot to fly the aircraft. All Airliner OEM's recommend engaging the auto pilot after Climb thrust is set, 1500ft agl, most climbs are done on Auto Pilot but the ENTIRE CRUISE is done by the auto pilot, The Auto Pilot computer is programmed to prevent Dutch Roll not the Flight Director.

Elite's basic Flight Director makes flying easy, solid in front, hollow behind, put the dot in the circle, In a video game the Aircraft is always perfectly trimmed, no lateral or vertical drift, (unless controller isn't zero'd), set course, start timer, fetch something cold, watch space go by...a Auto Pilot to do that, why ?....

 

[FlyingFree]

To all those arguing they don't want autopilot: don't use it. What business is it of yours how other people want to play the game? You play the way you want, let them play the way they want.

 

[AndyJ]

I'd support an improvement to the Autopilot so that it can launch, under direction of traffic control - so exiting when it's safe to do so.
This would also require that the station has autodock capability which takes over the control of ships.

Also to pilot the ship to a destination in supercruise, like the "Frontier" games did, as having sit there making tiny manual adjustments to speed/direction at some of the further destinations is not great game play to be honest.
However the "Frontier" autopilot did enjoy creating new craters with your ship, as it wouldn't avoid trivial obstructions such as planets! This "feature" could be retained so that you would still need to keep an eye on where the autopilot is taking you.
It should also disengage in the case of Interdiction, requiring the pilot to take control.

Fuel scooping or jumping between systems should be a manual process though.

 

[Hooplah]

Greetings,

This has been discussed before in many threads over the years. An autopilot removes a lot of the balance in the game "playing field". All ships in supercruise generally fly within limited min/max parameters of speed/thrust/pitch/roll/yaw. This ensures that all players can interact with NPCs and other players. Time is required to accomplish a goal in a system allowing interaction with other ships. Autopilot suggestions often change these basic game parameters which is why it will probably never happen.

Frontier is really big on balance (some will totally disagree) and a major change would certainly effect the game play. Any change has to pass the gauntlet of how it effects every other player style in the game. Even then it has to be a positive change versus the negatives any change will add to this complex game. Many thread suggestions don't consider other play styles because they simply have never played them or did but not enough to become an expert at them. I'm an expert at all things trading but don't have a clue or want one with bounty hunting etc. Sometimes it's not our thing which is fine.

As for the Docking Computer maybe two years ago I simply suggested adding a class 1 internal slot added to every ship. It would have helped a lot with the Docking Computer, Advanced Discovery Scanner, Detailed Surface Scanner etc but never happened. The smallest internal slot in a Cutter is class 3. Per immersion it would be appropriate to have a class 1 slot for the DC in an expensive ship. What were the Gutamaya engineers thinking? They must have been flying an "Onionhead" Cobra Mk III to work and using their product.

I didn't see a balance issue doing this. Small ships would be a little more useful while medium and large ships would also benefit. Maybe it was simply with everyone having a Docking Computer too many players would never learn to dock manually. Still it might have been a balance thing as with an additional class 1 on a Cutter I could add a class 3 FSD Interdictor. We'll we can't have that!

Regards to All

 

[Master Dwrety]

You are absolutely right. I understand the concern that auto-pilot could be less fair for those who spent hundreds of hours playing and even dangerous to the game mechanism. But, spending most of the time jumping and scooping for long distance travel is a very tiring thing to do. Like I said, make this a achievable only in visited systems.

Or maybe let the player to purchase system info data (essentially auto-pilot permission in certain systems, and of course in a populated system) to actually make the travel. It also makes more sense that the factions are willing to pay players millions of credits for system scan info. For new players, they don't have enough credits, so they have to manually explore. And for those who have spent lots of time traveling, they should be rewarded with this privilege. There are several hundred popular systems in the main bubble. For example, you can have this one-time purchase permission to be around 2~3 Mil. So if I need 10 jumps, I will have to pay around 25 Mil once in my life. To be honest, I'd rather spend some credits on this than flying all the way by myself. It's not good for my health, lol.

Anyway, this is just one possible suggestion. I will stick to my thoughts about the gameplay, hopefully some of you guys can offer better solutions. And also, if FD is going to add space legs, I think it's definitely cool that we can actually take our hands off the joysticks and walk around in our ships and interacts with on board NPCs and ship modules.

 

[777Driver]

So, modern aircraft land and take off and land on autopilot? No of course not, which is exactly the opposite of what we are discussing. Modern aircraft hold course and altitude, take into account drift and wind while flying between points, we already do that, just point your nose at that big yellow circle and walk away if you so desire. Unlike modern aircraft we in fact do get autopilot landing, but not takeoff, so our autopilot is way more advanced than the ones we already have. Come back when passenger jet aircraft are landing and taking off on autopilot and we'll discuss it again.

Veronica, the old Piper Archer I flew had a basic autopilot, that is not what I am discussing. Modern commercial aircraft have been capable of CAT I up to III Autolands for over 30 years. CAT III is zero visibility with roll out guidance. The L1011 Tristar was fitted with the ability to take off automatically, in fact any aircraft could be retrofitted with the ability, it is just not needed since you have SRS and localizer runway guidance for low visibility. Nasa's Orbitor obviously had fully automated launch and approach, that was designed in the 60's/70's.

Modern autopilots do not just hold course, you have a flight management guidance system (FMGS or FMC) The aircraft can automatically climb/Des to desired altitudes (managed altitude) Can follow an entire flight plan across the globe with no crew input (managed nav)

There are three stages

Manual flight - Hand flying

Selected - Crew operate the aircraft through the autopilot panel

Managed The aircraft completely operates itself with no crew input except changes made in the FMGS/FMC

An average crew operating on a long haul flight of 9 hours will normally only manually fly the machine for a few minutes out of the whole flight. That is assuming an autoland isn't used. My old man flew the A340 with Gulf Air, then moved to the 744 freighters with Singapore.

 

[777Driver]

That would require detailed knowledge of ships jump range and the variables which affect the jump range I have no desire to read up all the variables required to plot the next waypoint, butt....why invent the wheel ?, currently all one has to do is select end destination and the course is automatically plotted with all selected variables factored in, its dead easy and simple, tell the computer what you want to do and it plots, and Elite's basic Flight Director (Compass with dot in it) is automatically programmed, Nice

I am talking about plotting waypoints in system, has nothing to do with jump range.

Which implies that a from/to course has been programmed in the Nav Computer for the Flight Director, more complexity which most folks who aren't in the aviation industry don't know of, Airline pilots know how to use a Auto Pilot/Flight Director system, can't expect the casual player to learn the sequence of events and programming required to get a Auto Pilot to follow the Flight Director. Who outside the Airline industry knows that the Flight Director has to be programmed by the human with LNAV and VNAV these are then displayed in the ADI via two bars or a chevron bar, and IF the human is Lazy the Auto Pilot can be engaged but it has to be instructed to follow the Flight Director, all the different Auto Pilot modes, man what a can of worms for the casual gamer.

I actually mentioned a flight path vector, however for the Flight director to work you only need to know the start location and the destination waypoint (again in system) Nothing complex about it on that level. If you lock a target in SC or even in normal space on a planet. you are not given the optimum path, you are given a straight line in SC, and a Rhumb line instead of a great circle path when on planets.

I am not talking about fully programming an FMC, it is not needed in Elite.

a SID is a "Standard Instrument Departure" ans a STAR is "Standard Terminal Arrival Route", perhaps they should contact Jeppeson or one of the many other establishments who publish airport data for Elite SID's and STAR's, again additional complexity which would confound the casual gamer, and yes I know that modern Airliner's have FMS's (Flight Management Systems) which have all the data stored and all the pilot has to do is push a button to activate a SID/STAR which will automatically program the Flight Director, piece of cake, but what would be the point of adding this complexity to the game ?, especially if all one has to do is press a button and it will automatically fly the required flight path ?.

By SID STAR I mean the ability to follow the optimal path from Glide to your requested pad (SIDS & STARS are simply waypoints guiding you in with alt restrictions) Ever flown into a surface port buried in mountains at night? We have night vision now so things are lot easier, we'll see how the devs tackle atmospheric flight and docking at ports with poor visibility and a 13000ft mountain between you and the port. Head to a port called 'Shriver platform' in Ovid, will give you an idea of what I am talking about.

It is quite easy to write some software that takes topography into account when plotting a path into and out of a port.