In space there is no altitude. You can go in specified headwind just by pointing you craft at said heading and hitting throttle up.
FA-on is actually akin to attitude and heading hold.
Autopilot thread
- Thread starter CMDR EDGEL0RD
- Start date
In space there is no altitude. You can go in specified headwind just by pointing you craft at said heading and hitting throttle up.
FA-on is actually akin to attitude and heading hold.
I don't have any issue with there not being an autopilot beyond what we already have in the game.
Maybe if we get additional gameplay that could make reasonable use of it here or there, then sure, maybe, but as of now, it's a non-issue, in my opinion.
We already have the equivalent of CAT I to III ILS capability on our ships (There is actually no difference between I & III) Flight assist is Alt and Heading Hold.
@Op - I'd wait on the planetary landings to come along, the devs will have to develop a deeper level of automation, that's if they plan to add various types of weather, low visibility etc. Don't see them adding an autopilot purely to reduce workload in space or cavok on planets.
A waste of resources, 1 pilot, 1 ship. If you don't like flying a ship, why did you buy the game?
Do you think that if we had all this automation, you, would be necessary for anything?
Don’t think you thought this through. If we had all this automation you would not even be needed to fly the ship at all. ED would consist of space-legs and the entire game would be centered around you walking around a planet (cause you wouldn’t need to be anywhere else) lining up at soup kitchens, going shopping or partying at the local bar.
So really think things through.
Something tells me you haven't thought this through, seems quite common on these forums.
I was thinking about this yesterday actually. If they want to implement space legs, they could productively implement an autopilot at the same time. Have the autopilot take effect when the player leaves their seat, it limits the throttle to 50% (so you can still do the journey much faster by hand if you choose to) and navigates to your target before taking appropriate action. Appropriate actions could be docking with a docking computer, jumping once heat permits, maybe landing on a planet once they put lat/long bookmarks in, otherwise just going into a holding pattern at the target, preferably with the ship aligned to provide scenic views from windows.
From there, as long as there are worthwhile things to do inside your ship with your space legs and the ship can give you alarms and alerts when you need to get back into the seat to deal with something out of its programming, it would work quite well I think.
Examples of activities to be done while out of your chair would be repairs to the ship or tuning of the SRV/fighter, synthesis of needed components, target practice with a sidearm, fighter, or the SRV, operating special exploration equipment like sensitive scanners or data mining servers, going to your computer terminal and watching the latest broadcasts or perusing the galmap, optimising routes or setting additional destinations for after your current one, looking over your materials in person, maybe tending a little garden or hydroponics system, and getting a coffee or tea.
I think such a system, especially if it incorporated relatively simple but varied "things" that need to be done by hand during travel to avoid some negative consequence, could effectively help prevent botting and cheating while also giving really good gameplay.
Thanks. But I bought this game to fly a spaceship, not fix my SRV.
Your entire suggestion for autopilot is based on changing some core mechanics just to suit space-legs. And adding FPS into the picture, i.e. space legs. If I wanted to play a game like that I would have stuck to Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR or kept hoping of Star Citizen.
Guess what was the thing that finally made me write off my $45 for SC? The fact that I had to run around the space station for 45mins trying to look for my ship and even then not finding it. I closed down that game (alpha) and immediately booted up ED, took off from my landing pad and thanked God someone had finally got around to developing a modern game (MMO?), based completely around flying a spaceship. And none of that bovine biowaste walking around, naked dancing nonsense.
If you want to do all those things in your suggestion there are games out that to scratch each specific need. ED scratches the need to fly and does not need to be the “be all to end all.”
Yeah I can see your point by your post. Including the you not properly thinking things through or far enough (it’s ok, most people tend to be myopic for self survival.)
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This.
One way I might agree with a full-autopilot was if it there was significant chance of malfunction ("I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." / "Hey bomb [autopilot]...", "Let there be light."), and that it became a pirate magnet. ;-)
Are we talking about the 'sex' bit or the game ??
(rookie numbers) @OP
I've no idea if you want AP or don't want an AP after reading the entire post. Might be just me..
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The fact that some people cheat via botting is not a reason to add autopilot to this game. It's actually an argument against an ingame autopilot.
I'm trying very hard to not post, "Buys a space ship flying game. Doesn't want to fly the space ship."
...
Dang it.
Some people already explore while watching Netflix. The solution to making exploration more engagin is not to completely automate the process, but to give players a reason to not "honk and jump," but to actually explore a system.
Then you're doing it wrong.
Thanks to real life concerns, I'm lucky to get five hours a week on this game, and yet I have heavily engineered ships, an Anaconda waiting for something worthwhile to do with it, and I have a blast every game session. I don't board flip or use the latest credit exploits. I simply learned how to fly well, and keep my eye open for the many, many opportunities this game provides.
Quite frankly, if you're unable to progress in this game, even if you don't have a lot of time to play it, you're doing something wrong.
I've considered it, and quite frankly, anything more than the "cruise control" setting that's already in the game will turn botting from requiring cheating software, to knowing how to set up a macro. You think it's bad now? Imagine what will happen once the barrier to entry is reduced to almost nothing.
Insert "triple face palm" meme here.
Also? See above.
8. Any function can be implemented as an optional for gameplay.Anyone which have some daoistic view on traveling can opt to not use the autopilot. I remember trying to get out from LHS 3447 without jumping despite knowing how to, and was set on not using jumps at all as this, as I've thought, will make my gameplay experience better. Unfortunately, ships do not move faster than 2001 ls/s.
Hmmm... Considers taking hours to Supercruise between the stars worthwhile, but considers manually piloting a ship for the 45 seconds it takes to perform a second jump to be beyond the pale. Something's not right here.
Lowering the barrier to automation isn't going to make what you perceive to be a problem any better.
The auto takeoff and landing of your ship, while you are in an SRV, is due to necessary gameplay compromises. You still need to manually land your ship first. Furthermore, the auto-docking module doesn't fly your ship for you. Instead, station control is the one in charge. In the game's lore, there's a reason for that: early AIs proved to be dangerous.
This topic has been around for ages, and for me, at least, it boils down to one thing: any autopilot, besides the cruise control that is already in the game, makes it way too easy for the game to essentially play itself. If you want a game that essentially plays itself, may I suggest Cookie Clicker?
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I was thinking about this yesterday actually. If they want to implement space legs, they could productively implement an autopilot at the same time. Have the autopilot take effect when the player leaves their seat, it limits the throttle to 50% (so you can still do the journey much faster by hand if you choose to) and navigates to your target before taking appropriate action. Appropriate actions could be docking with a docking computer, jumping once heat permits, maybe landing on a planet once they put lat/long bookmarks in, otherwise just going into a holding pattern at the target, preferably with the ship aligned to provide scenic views from windows.
From there, as long as there are worthwhile things to do inside your ship with your space legs and the ship can give you alarms and alerts when you need to get back into the seat to deal with something out of its programming, it would work quite well I think.
Examples of activities to be done while out of your chair would be repairs to the ship or tuning of the SRV/fighter, synthesis of needed components, target practice with a sidearm, fighter, or the SRV, operating special exploration equipment like sensitive scanners or data mining servers, going to your computer terminal and watching the latest broadcasts or perusing the galmap, optimising routes or setting additional destinations for after your current one, looking over your materials in person, maybe tending a little garden or hydroponics system, and getting a coffee or tea
I think such a system, especially if it incorporated relatively simple but varied "things" that need to be done by hand during travel to avoid some negative consequence, could effectively help prevent botting and cheating while also giving really good gameplay.
Quite frankly, any emergency that would be severe enough for me to leave the bridge, as opposed to finishing the 30 second trip to a station, would be severe enough for me to want to make an emergency drop to normal space. Any other activity can wait until I'm either safely docked at a station, landed on a planet, or in normal space.
This, of course, assumes that there are no other crew members to take the helm.
What does AI have to with a guidance systems coupled to an autopilot? I think you completely misunderstood what Mr Brooks is talking about, he is talking about the development of self aware machines. We have had autopilots since the 1930's, today we have complex guidance systems, it has nothing to do with AI, the first true AI commercial system is not expected to be around till the mid 2020's, even then it will be limited to problem solving and auto route adjustments.
Just a side note, I lived on an Airforce base in Makurdi many years ago, they where performing weapons testing and developing guidance systems using Jaguars as part of an ongoing UK govt project, also quite a few years in the Middle East with guidance systems on commercial aircraft, nothing to do with AI.
A guidance system does not mean AI has to be implemented. AI or bots would be bad for this game, a standard autopilot (man machine interface) would do zero harm to this game if implemented properly. As already mentioned, flight assist already provides this function on a basic level, I see no issue with extending that to navigation within the game. We are talking basic tech that has been around before the majority of us where born.
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After reading some of the comments in this thread, I really want FD to introduce an autopilot just as some have described here. And as soon as it is introduced I will throw off the shackles of respectability and embrace the dark side. Jump back into open, and just hang around the nav beacon. Because 3 out of 4 idiots will coming into the system, orientate towards their destination station and immediately hit the autopilot button. And then they will get up from their chairs and sofa's to get a drink, have a smoke, start watching TV or Netflix or whatever. Hey they are on autopilot, what could go wrong right. So I will just float in behind them, and well KILL THEM
Sure, everyone says they will still be paying full attention when on autopilot but we all know that the vast majority won't pay the slightest amount of attention after the first couple of runs. Oh, don't think that hiding in Solo or a PG will help, cos I bet the Mistress adjusts the NPCs so any Commander flying under autopilot (which will be easy to differentiate due to the reduced speed) has a much higher chance of being interdicted.
Sure, everyone says they will still be paying full attention when on autopilot but we all know that the vast majority won't pay the slightest amount of attention after the first couple of runs. Oh, don't think that hiding in Solo or a PG will help, cos I bet the Mistress adjusts the NPCs so any Commander flying under autopilot (which will be easy to differentiate due to the reduced speed) has a much higher chance of being interdicted.
I'm still not convinced that self-driving cars are a good idea, even though I intellectually accept that once the technology is improved, they'll be safer than human drivers.
As for the Elite Universe, according to the lore, such things were not only possible, but were actually done, and to a degree that they turned sapient. This turned out to be a bad thing. And not not all the AIs were accounted for.
After reading some of the comments in this thread, I really want FD to introduce an autopilot just as some have described here. And as soon as it is introduced I will throw off the shackles of respectability and embrace the dark side. Jump back into open, and just hang around the nav beacon. Because 3 out of 4 idiots will coming into the system, orientate towards their destination station and immediately hit the autopilot button. And then they will get up from their chairs and sofa's to get a drink, have a smoke, start watching TV or Netflix or whatever. Hey they are on autopilot, what could go wrong right. So I will just float in behind them, and well KILL THEM
Sure, everyone says they will still be paying full attention when on autopilot but we all know that the vast majority won't pay the slightest amount of attention after the first couple of runs. Oh, don't think that hiding in Solo or a PG will help, cos I bet the Mistress adjusts the NPCs so any Commander flying under autopilot (which will be easy to differentiate due to the reduced speed) has a much higher chance of being interdicted.
You do realise you are almost guaranteed an interdiction if you are carrying freight? it would make zero difference if the ship was on autopilot or not, if a cmdr leaves the bridge he is at risk of losing the ship.
@Darkfrye - once again, you do not need AI for guidance systems.
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Can't remember about autopilot in original Elite(probably wasn't), but in Frontier: Elite 2 there was autopilot, you could even fast forward time. Wasn't in no way gamebreaking or anything, it worked and made sense. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but iirc you could even autopilot in combat, I seem to remember putting ship on autopilot and then gunning down a ship, which was chasing me, in turret.
Yeah I recall doing that! Target the emeny ship and turn on the autopilot and it would try and follow it - it wasn't really a useful combat tactic, but it was good for catching things if they tried to run away. The thing about FE2 (& FFE) was that it was single player so you could muck around with time - hyperspace jumps always took time so you could arrive before your target when doing assisnation missions and such. Obvioulsy wouldn't work in ED though - it being realtime (albeit a thousand-odd years in the future!).
The autopilot for landing on planets already exists, we just cannot access it. Recall your ship when in your SRV and watch it land all by itself.
Yep, messing with time doesn't work in multiplayer environment, but I don't see any reason, how autopilot would break something. Just make the autotravel time slower than it would be, when you keep your speed optimal in manual mode(this would encourage manual flying). And make autopilot as item, for which you have to sacrifice a slot.
Just like docking computer works. Let's face it.. it makes no difference in overall gameplay, whether someone uses docking computer or not. Same goes for autopilot. Makes no difference, whether you go from point A to point B while holding your flightstick or not.