So, I know that bringing up autopilot on here is a good way to get mobbed and beaten to death with a stick, but hear me out. Limited autopilot for use with hyperspace travel is becoming kinda a necessity, and the lack of it is a bit glaring. I'm referring to when you plot a course on the galaxy map, and the ship highlights your route and everything but you need to turn to avoid the star when you jump in system and then turn towards the next jump coordinates and press J to keep flying. This gets very repetitive and incredibly dull, and requires just enough player attention that you can't do anything else while it's occurring. If you're just doing a handful of jumps this isn't an issue, you just sorta deal with it, but if you want to go to Colonia, I hope you really like manually making a slight turn and pressing J a few hundred times for several hours, while the game demands just enough attention that you can't do anything else. It's especially painful to me because I am a pilot, and have flown real planes which have autopilot, and something as menial as maintaining a heading that the ship already knows is something even modern autopilot can do, and doesn't detract from the experience of flying a bit, it just frees up the pilot to do things other than stare at a compass needle and make sure they haven't gotten off their heading, or in this case, stare at circles and listen to "frameshift drive, charging" for the hundredth time, wondering why they spent two hours playing your game when it intentionally makes itself not fun and un-intuitive in that regard. I've flown cessnas which apparently have more useful autopilot features than 2,000 ton starships, and shockingly, the cessna is more fun to fly because of it, because it doesn't demand my 100% attention at all times.
To be clear, I don't want autopilot to
1) navigate within a system
2) land or take off for you
3) avoid interdictions or fuel scoop
4) Do anything which actually requires skill
5) Do literally anything except avoiding the star, turning slightly, and jumping, on long hyperspace routes that have been planned in the galaxy map.
The absence of this option has become more glaring with the addition of things like SRVs and Fighters, which make it clear while you're using them that the ship can function with some degree of autonomy, just not while you're in it. If I'm spending several hours flying to Colonia, I'd like to be able to kick up my feet and watch the stars go by, maybe browse the galnet or check out the galaxy/system maps while it's functioning, because with the current system it demands just enough attention that I can't look through other menus and things in the game, which makes it harder to justify having those menus even available outside of starports, since your ship can't fly while you're looking at them. I spend very little time looking at things like galnet and other lore material, because time spent looking at them currently subtracts from time that could be spent flying.
While I'm on the subject, having the hyperspace jump itself not break whatever you're doing in the game would also be nice. I can't tell you how many times I've been trying to use comms, and I'm typing while the frameshift drive is charging, hoping desperately to finish the message before the drive finished charging and the count down timer screams "LOOK AT ME" for the billionth time and drags me out of comms to force me to watch the red numbers count down center-screen when I really want to be chatting with a friend. Thanks for your consideration, and have a nice day.
PS: While I'd love to hear what people think about this, please no "U JUST WANT WIN BUTTON", and "HOW ABOUT FREE CONDA BUTTON" comments. I'd contend that if all you have to do to "win" the game is turn slightly and press J, which is all I want the autopilot to do, then it wouldn't be a game worth winning.
To be clear, I don't want autopilot to
1) navigate within a system
2) land or take off for you
3) avoid interdictions or fuel scoop
4) Do anything which actually requires skill
5) Do literally anything except avoiding the star, turning slightly, and jumping, on long hyperspace routes that have been planned in the galaxy map.
The absence of this option has become more glaring with the addition of things like SRVs and Fighters, which make it clear while you're using them that the ship can function with some degree of autonomy, just not while you're in it. If I'm spending several hours flying to Colonia, I'd like to be able to kick up my feet and watch the stars go by, maybe browse the galnet or check out the galaxy/system maps while it's functioning, because with the current system it demands just enough attention that I can't look through other menus and things in the game, which makes it harder to justify having those menus even available outside of starports, since your ship can't fly while you're looking at them. I spend very little time looking at things like galnet and other lore material, because time spent looking at them currently subtracts from time that could be spent flying.
While I'm on the subject, having the hyperspace jump itself not break whatever you're doing in the game would also be nice. I can't tell you how many times I've been trying to use comms, and I'm typing while the frameshift drive is charging, hoping desperately to finish the message before the drive finished charging and the count down timer screams "LOOK AT ME" for the billionth time and drags me out of comms to force me to watch the red numbers count down center-screen when I really want to be chatting with a friend. Thanks for your consideration, and have a nice day.
PS: While I'd love to hear what people think about this, please no "U JUST WANT WIN BUTTON", and "HOW ABOUT FREE CONDA BUTTON" comments. I'd contend that if all you have to do to "win" the game is turn slightly and press J, which is all I want the autopilot to do, then it wouldn't be a game worth winning.
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