This is the year 3306. Our ships are smart enough to be able to depart a planet's surface and enter orbit while we are in an SRV without any crew aboard. This same ship can then return to the planet surface and land. Again, not requiring any additional crew. It just does it because it can.
So why does this super smart shipboard autopilot need two extra modules just to enable the ability to autodock (and launch) and perform rudimentary autopilot functions in supercruise?
Hear me out on this. Starports are hugely busy areas where (as many trolls have shown) ships can easily collide with each other or the station. If the ships of this age have the ability to slave their controls to the air traffic control tower, why would that be optional?
I am suggesting that the autodock and supercruise assist modules be removed from the game and instead every ship should have two additional toggle options under their Internal Equipment> Ship panel (where night vision and ship lights are located) that are set to enabled by default. One for Autodock that allows them to select between 'Dock and Launch', 'Dock Only', or 'Disabled'. And one for Supercruise Assist that allows them to enable or disable Jump Deceleration.
When a ship has handed its controls over to the traffic control tower, that ship should be immune to collision penalties. If a ship jumps in the way and gets run over, the pilot of the autodocking ship does not receive any fines. Additionally, if the autodocking ship dies from a collision, insurance should replace their ship free of charge and compensate 50% of the value of any cargo lost.
If you want to smuggle items into a station (or you just want to "feel like a man"), just disable the Autodock feature in the ship panel and everything will function as it has in the past.
However, Insurance should also be altered to better reflect actual real-world practices. If you die from a collision while not under control of the autodock function, the Insurance company should decrease the amount they are willing to cover for your lost property. This is not just on a ship by ship basis, but an account-wide basis. Hence, if you frequently jump in front of large transport ships in a shieldless Sidewinder and get run over, your Insurance will begin to decrease their coverage by 10% for each incident and only resets after a decent amount of time (say a month) has passed with no incidents. Say you get run over 7 times in a week, your insurance coverage is down from 95% to 25%. You finally decide you are tired of trolling pilots and switch to your Imperial Cutter and ironically boost into the side of the mailslot because your finger slipped when trying to retract your landing gear. Unfortunately, because Insurance is account-based and not ship-based, you now have to cover 75% of the rebuy cost of your 200,000,000 CR ship instead of 5%.
Just my shower thoughts for the day. o7
So why does this super smart shipboard autopilot need two extra modules just to enable the ability to autodock (and launch) and perform rudimentary autopilot functions in supercruise?
Hear me out on this. Starports are hugely busy areas where (as many trolls have shown) ships can easily collide with each other or the station. If the ships of this age have the ability to slave their controls to the air traffic control tower, why would that be optional?
I am suggesting that the autodock and supercruise assist modules be removed from the game and instead every ship should have two additional toggle options under their Internal Equipment> Ship panel (where night vision and ship lights are located) that are set to enabled by default. One for Autodock that allows them to select between 'Dock and Launch', 'Dock Only', or 'Disabled'. And one for Supercruise Assist that allows them to enable or disable Jump Deceleration.
When a ship has handed its controls over to the traffic control tower, that ship should be immune to collision penalties. If a ship jumps in the way and gets run over, the pilot of the autodocking ship does not receive any fines. Additionally, if the autodocking ship dies from a collision, insurance should replace their ship free of charge and compensate 50% of the value of any cargo lost.
If you want to smuggle items into a station (or you just want to "feel like a man"), just disable the Autodock feature in the ship panel and everything will function as it has in the past.
However, Insurance should also be altered to better reflect actual real-world practices. If you die from a collision while not under control of the autodock function, the Insurance company should decrease the amount they are willing to cover for your lost property. This is not just on a ship by ship basis, but an account-wide basis. Hence, if you frequently jump in front of large transport ships in a shieldless Sidewinder and get run over, your Insurance will begin to decrease their coverage by 10% for each incident and only resets after a decent amount of time (say a month) has passed with no incidents. Say you get run over 7 times in a week, your insurance coverage is down from 95% to 25%. You finally decide you are tired of trolling pilots and switch to your Imperial Cutter and ironically boost into the side of the mailslot because your finger slipped when trying to retract your landing gear. Unfortunately, because Insurance is account-based and not ship-based, you now have to cover 75% of the rebuy cost of your 200,000,000 CR ship instead of 5%.
Just my shower thoughts for the day. o7
