Request Docking hotkey

[scadh]

I would head over to HCS voice packs site and buy the Astra Voice pack which has every command you will ever need already programmed.
You can also turn off the panels,just click on the dropdown and set it to do nothing.

On your recommendation, I just went and bought the Astra HCS Voice Pack and have to say I'm quite impressed. It's probably overkill for my needs as, while it's cool (in the short term, anyway) to say "Throttle to 75%", I have a button mapped on the throttle for that already and my finger is literally resting on it at all times. It will never be faster to say it. I use it to avoid the loop of shame with the 7-second rule so timing is critical.

Anything that's on the flight stick or throttle, I expect I'll keep doing that way. Anything on the stick base I'll VoiceAttack. There are 12 buttons on my T1600 base, mostly mapped to less time-sensitive things like landing gear, cargo scoop, maps, etc. My VR headset arrives tomorrow and I think any opportunity I have to avoid taking my hand off the stick is worthwhile. Additionally, things that take multiple "clicks", such as requesting docking, I'll use VoiceAttack. Finally, voice commands to your favorite bookmarks and Engineers from the cockpit view is a game-changer. "Plot course home" to return to Jameson or "Plot course to Felicity Farseer" is awesome.

My HOTAS is overflowing with buttons and switches and I'm still finding value in VoiceAttack/Astra. I can only imagine how valuable it would be to someone with a simpler HOTAS (such as my son's Thrustmaster HOTAS X). VA is $8.99US on Steam, and Asta is $14.99. For $24, I think that's an absolute steal.

 

[MarkAusten]

I made a request. Many years ago, here it is again if anyone is interested...

- Add a simple option to the game config so folks could disable the "wrap around" of the ships onboard menu's. Right now, if you "right arrow" your way continuously, you'ld "wrap around "the "back of the menu" and come back onto the "front" and then start moving right again.

- Turning this "wrap around" off would provide a a "wall" that automated tools like Voice Attack specifically could run up against when scrolling up, down, left, or right.

- This gives them a menu location that would always allow them to locate an "Upper Left", "Upper Right", "Top option", "Last Option" etc on the ships menu system. They simply over-swipe in a particular direction and they can easily hit any top, bottom, left, or right of the menu system.

- Now they have a coordinate system, from a reliable known good location, to a reliable location of the desired entry in the menu system.

- This solves so many of the "memory and tracking challenges" when Voice Attack tries to remember what you last ASKED it do vs what you did MANUALLY when it wasn't watching.

- ..and it could simply be an optional menu behavior just in case it might break something for some other tool.

Some things have been added. You can now determine which panel you are looking at in broad terms. The available options are none (for the HUD), external panel, internal panel, communications panel, role panel, galaxy map, system map and station services. So, keeping tabs on those is no longer needed.

The wrap around thing is not too much of a problem and if you know your VA programming then you can still track manual keypresses well enough and really, you only need to track the tab left and right keys since many of the ED menus do have a hard stop, just not the main panels.

Personally, having just spent the day going through and rewriting, updating and simplifying all my VA macros developed since Elite Dangerous was launched as well as removing many that I just don't use anymore, I find that none of the "problems" you mention are that much of a problem anymore. I have some fairly complex macros that work pretty well.

If you are really clever then you can add a reset macro that opens each of the panels in turn and asks you which tab is showing and calibrates itself depending on your answer. I did have one but I took it out earlier today as I haven't used it in years, the VA/EDDI/ED combination is just too reliable these days.

Well, mine seems to be.

 

[evanevery]

Some things have been added. You can now determine which panel you are looking at in broad terms. The available options are none (for the HUD), external panel, internal panel, communications panel, role panel, galaxy map, system map and station services. So, keeping tabs on those is no longer needed.

The wrap around thing is not too much of a problem and if you know your VA programming then you can still track manual keypresses well enough and really, you only need to track the tab left and right keys since many of the ED menus do have a hard stop, just not the main panels.

Personally, having just spent the day going through and rewriting, updating and simplifying all my VA macros developed since Elite Dangerous was launched as well as removing many that I just don't use anymore, I find that none of the "problems" you mention are that much of a problem anymore. I have some fairly complex macros that work pretty well.

If you are really clever then you can add a reset macro that opens each of the panels in turn and asks you which tab is showing and calibrates itself depending on your answer. I did have one but I took it out earlier today as I haven't used it in years, the VA/EDDI/ED combination is just too reliable these days.

Well, mine seems to be.

The VA Macros have demonsterable issues with menu tracking unless you use VA and ONLY VA to access your ships systems. I tend to use a mix of things (manual and VA) and experience demonstrates that VA can't track everything accurately. It seems I can't even get a successful "Request Docking" about half the time (even as the very first command after entering a system).

Simply disabling the "menu wrap" would completely solve this problem as it would provide a reliable origin in any of the shipboard menu's.

Its a simple "enhancement" and could be easily enabled/disabled if folks (like yourself) didn't want anything to upset their existing ecosystem...

 

[scadh]

The VA Macros have demonsterable issues with menu tracking unless you use VA and ONLY VA to access your ships systems. I tend to use a mix of things (manual and VA) and experience demonstrates that VA can't track everything accurately. It seems I can't even get a successful "Request Docking" about half the time (even as the very first command after entering a system).

Simply disabling the "menu wrap" would completely solve this problem as it would provide a reliable origin in any of the shipboard menu's.

Its a simple "enhancement" and could be easily enabled/disabled if folks (like yourself) didn't want anything to upset their existing ecosystem...

I, too, am finding a few issues with VA tracking of panel status. And, like you, it seems like I have to request docking twice, as it's denied the first time. And I will never again use VA in-station, as I had a moment of panic where I asked it "restock limpets", which is supposed to fill the hold with limpets. Instead it went batstuff crazy and just navigated all over hell and back in the station UI, clicking and scrolling like mad for easily 15 seconds. At one point, it got into my list of owned ships in the shipyard and I lost my mind as it scrolled through them rapidly, where I feared it had sold my engineered Anaconda. I would really and truly used some foul language had that occurred.

That having been said, I am finding VA to be a huge value-add to my gaming experience in VR. I have the occasional command not understood, but I have not yet had any incidental talk interpreted and acted upon. It seems quite reliable. I use it for landing gear, lights, cargo scoop, galaxy map, etc and it's both faster and more immersive.

 

[DaveB]

I don't buy the "make it harder for bot makers" argument.

Now, I'm an old-school geek and I got my start working in an X gui. The thing I miss about that environment most is that every control event was configurable to your tastes. I'd like to see our ships be the same. If it's a menu endpoint that triggers a command or a ship function of ANY kind, then it should be bindable to a control event of some kind in addition to being accessible from the in-cockpit UI. Sure, the control configuration would be more complex (separate out the weird ones into an "advanced controls" section perhaps?) but folks wouldn't need to (and couldnt given the number of possibilities) bind them all - just the ones THEY wanted.

 

[Jmanis]

You know what I'd rather than a Request Docking key?

More gameplay and dialog options when using the contacts window... which tbh feels like exactly what it was designed for (thus, no hotkey) but is just, like many things, empty space instead.

 

[Factabulous]

You know what I'd rather than a Request Docking key?

More gameplay and dialog options when using the contacts window... which tbh feels like exactly what it was designed for (thus, no hotkey) but is just, like many things, empty space instead.

It's interesting they never added an 'Anonymous Docking Request' option when they added anonymous docking - make people choose how they dock, rather than having the game decide.

Plus being able to demand loot from contacts, haggle with NPCs during S&R, contact m/s to kick off scenarios. Lots of fun stuff.

They probably all will have hotkeys demanded though

 

[MarkAusten]

The VA Macros have demonsterable issues with menu tracking unless you use VA and ONLY VA to access your ships systems. I tend to use a mix of things (manual and VA) and experience demonstrates that VA can't track everything accurately. It seems I can't even get a successful "Request Docking" about half the time (even as the very first command after entering a system).

Simply disabling the "menu wrap" would completely solve this problem as it would provide a reliable origin in any of the shipboard menu's.

Its a simple "enhancement" and could be easily enabled/disabled if folks (like yourself) didn't want anything to upset their existing ecosystem...

I guess we will have to agree to disagree on that then since I've just rewritten all my VA scripts and can state that I have very few issues with tracking the wrap around panel tabs.

In fact, my scripts take the short route to the requested tab, taking advantage of the wrap around. The exception to this is the exterior panel since you cannot reliably determine when there are 3 or 4 active tabs. I'm using VA and EDDI and manual input.

If you are still having problems with the simple docking request, then I suggest that you might be doing something not quite right.

I would go so far as to say that having hard stops would make things less efficient since the first thing you would need to do, every single time you opened one of the four main panels, would be to issue TAB LEFT 4, 6 or 7 times depending on the panel and then go back to the tab you asked for. What a total pain.

Unless you tracked the tabs in the which case what would be the point of a hard stop except as a reset?

The only issues that my VA/EDDI/Manueal operation has is when there is a significant delay in Elite processing a key press such as occurs when there is a temporary Internet delay.

The only advantage that FDev could give us, as far as I can see, is a status entry that define exactly which screen is currently active instead of the few they have defined so far. Then the wrap around wouldn't matter since you'd know exactly where you were.

 

[MarkAusten]

I, too, am finding a few issues with VA tracking of panel status. And, like you, it seems like I have to request docking twice, as it's denied the first time. And I will never again use VA in-station, as I had a moment of panic where I asked it "restock limpets", which is supposed to fill the hold with limpets. Instead it went batstuff crazy and just navigated all over hell and back in the station UI, clicking and scrolling like mad for easily 15 seconds. At one point, it got into my list of owned ships in the shipyard and I lost my mind as it scrolled through them rapidly, where I feared it had sold my engineered Anaconda. I would really and truly used some foul language had that occurred.

That having been said, I am finding VA to be a huge value-add to my gaming experience in VR. I have the occasional command not understood, but I have not yet had any incidental talk interpreted and acted upon. It seems quite reliable. I use it for landing gear, lights, cargo scoop, galaxy map, etc and it's both faster and more immersive.

Getting a docking request denied message has nothing to do with VA. In fact, I would go as far to say that your script worked, since ED recognised the request and denied it. I would look for another reason.

In cases where your script goes crazy there is a stop commands button on the VA display. You can also create a "stop commands" macro to do the same thing. Any running scripts are terminated immediately. You can use this in VR. Call it something like 'stop stop stop". That should do the trick.

 

[MarkAusten]

I don't buy the "make it harder for bot makers" argument.

Now, I'm an old-school geek and I got my start working in an X gui. The thing I miss about that environment most is that every control event was configurable to your tastes. I'd like to see our ships be the same. If it's a menu endpoint that triggers a command or a ship function of ANY kind, then it should be bindable to a control event of some kind in addition to being accessible from the in-cockpit UI. Sure, the control configuration would be more complex (separate out the weird ones into an "advanced controls" section perhaps?) but folks wouldn't need to (and couldnt given the number of possibilities) bind them all - just the ones THEY wanted.

Oh yes. X server. I remember the days. The newbie joke in one company I worked for was to redirect the display to someone else's monitor.

 

[MarkAusten]

deleted

 

[scadh]

Call it something like 'stop stop stop". That should do the trick.

Hmm, 'stop stop stop' is interesting. When my panic moment hit, I tried a different 4-letter word in rapid succession, but VA didn't seem to recognize it...

 

[MarkAusten]

Hmm, 'stop stop stop' is interesting. When my panic moment hit, I tried a different 4-letter word in rapid succession, but VA didn't seem to recognize it...

Yes, you don't want VA to stop all commands when you use Anglo-Saxon since you might do that for some other reason

 

[MarkAusten]

Hmm, 'stop stop stop' is interesting. When my panic moment hit, I tried a different 4-letter word in rapid succession, but VA didn't seem to recognize it...

Set up a new command for when I say 'stop stop stop' and in that command end Advanced -> VoiceAttack Action -> Stop Processing All Commands
Save and you're done.

Of course you could use 'f**k f**k f**k' as the 'When I say' but probably not a good idea.

 

[DaveB]

Oh yes. X server. I remember the days. The newbie joke in one company I worked for was to redirect the display to someone else's monitor.

Amateurs. You want to have the displays of every system in the office playing musical chairs. Everyone gets to play "Chase your desktop session" and the last one to get to theirs gets logged out and that screen goes dark.....



(just a mere disciple of the master BOFH)

 

[MarkAusten]

Amateurs. You want to have the displays of every system in the office playing musical chairs. Everyone gets to play "Chase your desktop session" and the last one to get to theirs gets logged out and that screen goes dark.....



(just a mere disciple of the master BOFH)

I like it. The fun we used to have.