Auto Pilot

[Sharky]

How about a basic auto pilot for those long boring inter-system flights???

Nothing fancy. just set a target ie. planet or unexplored point. Hit auto-pilot and the ship will take you there and drop out of auto and stop say 500-1000ls from target.

This could still be risky for those that go afk as you can still be interdicted and destroyed if you are not at the controls. That would be the determining factor when in a busy system. Not so much when deep space exploring
although some small risk could be implemented like chance of dropping out of auto due to an asteroid or space debris which you would collide with of you are not at wheel. Maybe not destroying you but causing damage that you may have to consider returning to populated space to repair.

 

[hawkenfox]

This was hammered on early betas ... I don't think it will happen.

 

[Insomnia]

3301 and no auto pilot? Do it. At least when traveling huge distances.

 

[Sharky]

I had a 400,000 ls trip the other day..it was excruciating. took over 15 mins of my time just to explore 1 star. I have seen those long trips from warp in to get to a station.. I usually just jump out and dont bother.
Bit of a fun spoiler.

 

[OldSchoolPlayer]

I had a 400,000 ls trip the other day..it was excruciating. took over 15 mins of my time just to explore 1 star. I have seen those long trips from warp in to get to a station.. I usually just jump out and dont bother.
Bit of a fun spoiler.

Do you eat all your breakfast lunch and dinner all in one go? You are permitted to take your time in this game if you like.

 

[777Driver]

I had a 400,000 ls trip the other day..it was excruciating. took over 15 mins of my time just to explore 1 star. I have seen those long trips from warp in to get to a station.. I usually just jump out and dont bother.
Bit of a fun spoiler.

This will likely come into play when crew members get added. That is of course if they add a helmsman. There is a mod out there that adds an autopilot in game, for obvious reasons it cant be posted on the forum. If I'm feeling lazy I just steer my bigger ship's via voice using voice attack

 

[InMemoriamSirocco]

3301 and no auto pilot? Do it. At least when traveling huge distances.

This was done to death during the gamma phase. Michael Brookes stated that there are no plans to implement an auto pilot.

That's the only official statement we ever got, as far as I know. No explanation, nothing.

Frontier had one, First Encounters had one... 50 ingame years later they have forgotten how to autopilot.

 

[Sharky]

Do you eat all your breakfast lunch and dinner all in one go? You are permitted to take your time in this game if you like.

I don't see how this is relevant in this context.
What are you saying? travel 100k ls then have a nap..then travel another 100k ls and watch some tv...etc

Im not saying do whole game on auto pilot. This is just one time wasting annoying aspect of game. It does not matter when exploring you just ignore the stuff too far from entry star..But when you get a mission to take this here..or that there.. and you enter system to see a 20 min journey with docking..then you just say ..awww fck it.. And if you abandon you lose rep...lose..lose

 

[Magic Man]

I had a 400,000 ls trip the other day..it was excruciating. took over 15 mins of my time just to explore 1 star.

Over 15 minutes to fly to a star? That's terrible...

This is just one time wasting annoying aspect of game.

Are you talking about a 'proper' auto-pilot - so your 15/20 minute journeys still take 15/20 minutes? or some form of time compression thing?

The first one, I have no issues with that as long as it follows the same rules, faces the same dangers and takes the same time as if you were flying it manually.

The second one? Nope. Doesn't fit in with the multi-player essence of the game. It's not a simple space shooter.