[Suggestion] Auto-Pilot

[Lestat]

I already spend a lot of my time in Elite: Dangerous NOT playing the game. I do mostly exploration in Elite. When I'm jumping between systems I've actually been known to fall asleep immediately after executing the FSD jump, sleep through the entire fuel scooping exercise (I don't know how but I've managed to figure out how to avoid splashing into the star 99% of the time with my eyes closed) and waking up just long enough to quickly check the system map for interesting targets before executing the next jump.

Well Instead of using the cheap class 1 fuel scoop or waiting until your out fuel. Buy a larger fuel scoop. That help a lot. Both of my Anaconda have Class 5 fuel scoop. It only take a few seconds to fill. Not half hour in the case of class 1 fuel scoop.

I do take medication that can cause drowsiness. But like driving. I do not play Elite Dangerous while tired. If you are falling asleep while playing a game. Talk to your Doctor. You might have a medical condition that needs to be look at by your doctor.

When I do find an interesting target worthy of scanning (Water World, Ammonia or Earth-like) It's often many light-seconds away. I point my ship at it and then proceed to find something else to do while I close the distance.

Auto pilot not the answer or bots. If it too far for you. You can jump to another system. There 400,000,000,000 systems. It will take thousands years before everyone in this game to discover all 400 billion systems. So don't worry about long distance. If it too far for you jump to a new system. Easy fix.

When I'm not sleep-exploring I tend to find a movie or binge-watch a series on Netflix. Elite: Dangerous has allowed me to rewatch every single television episode of every Star Trek series, Battlestar Galactica (original and reboot), Babylon 5, and much, much more.

Well Exploration gives us that option. But Auto pilot plus bots is not the answer. We have the option to jump to a new system.

Face this fact. We don't want to give option to people that can use auto pilot and bots to make money off of us. I can see gold seller screaming yes yes yes for this idea.

I can see it now. You pay a gold seller they add a bot it plays 24 hours. All they have to do plot 1,000 ly basic scan system with bot. Repeat 1 to 4 hours depending on the jump range. Player get tons of credits. Let them and the players work for their money.

 

[Jaiotu]

Well Instead of using the cheap class 1 fuel scoop or waiting until your out fuel. Buy a larger fuel scoop. That help a lot. Both of my Anaconda have Class 5 fuel scoop. It only take a few seconds to fill. Not half hour in the case of class 1 fuel scoop.

lol. Yeah, I usually fit the largest fuel scoop I can affix to my ship. I've timed my average hyperspace jump, scooping and all, to about one-and-a-half minutes. The amount of time that I'm required to actually pilot my ship during that time period is about 20 seconds. That gives me 70 seconds of snooze time.

I do take medication that can cause drowsiness. But like driving. I do not play Elite Dangerous while tired. If you are falling asleep while playing a game. Talk to your Doctor. You might have a medical condition that needs to be look at by your doctor.

I'm ex-military. I can sleep standing up or even when marching. I'm on my what must be about my 7th trip to Colonia right now and believe me it's just as engaging as it sounds. Totally my choice of course but I really want my FAS out there and I'm not willing to pay the transfer cost. Given my current jump range it take about an hour to travel 1,000 light-years. That's a 22 hour trip. If I can sleep most of the way there then that's just a bonus ... especially since I work nights and weekends. Sleep is at a premium. I get it wherever and whenever I can.

Auto pilot not the answer or bots. If it too far for you. You can jump to another system. There 400,000,000,000 systems. It will take thousands years before everyone in this game to discover all 400 billion systems. So don't worry about long distance. If it too far for you jump to a new system. Easy fix.

I never actually said anything about autopilot in my post. I simply pointed out that much of my playing Elite involved me NOT actually playing. Ever fly to Hutton Orbital? Most of the trip your already essentially "on autopilot". In principle I'm against anything that allows you to earn credits or gain rank without being physically present at the controls.

If Frontier were to implement some kind of autopilot feature I wouldn't want it to be able perform any kind of scan for you. You'd get zero credits or "experience" for exploration data. It would have to work in a way that prevents the player from interacting with the controls to prevent a macro from "honking" while the autopilot is in possession of the ship as well. Basically: Zero reward for using autopilot.

 

[Fenrisus]

FSD Autopilot should be in this game.

That is really boring to do a near 1800 jumps manually. (Passenger missions to COLONIA for example).

Mainly my idea is to make SOL-to-SOL FSD autopilot. When arrive to last star system, they will simple turn off fsd. Well, in this case, how this will affect on "moneymaking" and etc. ? Not see any idea.

Playing the game != live in the game.
FSD travels for 50+ jumps is literally boring. Nothing todo more, when you simple going from point A to point B (jump from SOL to SOL).

 

[UFO Reality]

I can see that some players feel that an auto-pilot dynamic may ruin the exploration part because they feel that it would make for a lazy pilot.
Maybe the players that don't like the idea of an auto-pilot dynamic feel that all their efforts will have been a useless grind if such a game dynamic was implemented.
The problem is that if other players get totally bored of the game and the game gets criticized by game reviews because the game lacks a well thought out auto-pilot dynamic then it is a fail for the game itself as another game from another company will get the market share.
It is so obvious that this game, after a long amount of time played, really lacks a good auto-pilot dynamic.
The fun part of ED is the space battles, affecting the BGS, finding profits through trading, the immersion of piloting a spaceship and to some extent the lore.
What isn't fun is having no choice in having to interact with the same loading screen when going for a long journey that requires over 5 hyperspace jumps.
It actually breaks the immersion due to the fact that it is repetitive and not really a game in itself.
A good NPC auto-pilot would take the same amount of time but without the nonsense of having to do it again and again and again.
Besides not all ships can have a NPC auto-pilot.
It can be a feature of a game if you read my earlier suggestion that the NPC pilot will negotiate by RNG dice or card game for a higher cut of profits when made to pilot the ship for any trade.
It could also be done for exploration.
All it needs is a little bit of extra thought for game balancing.
I would suggest that the NPC pilot could just randomly decide to resign/eject and leave you to have to visit another spaceport to hire a new one if you constantly use/abuse the auto-pilot feature, a hidden counter similar to drops in a bucket like how the BGS works.
I only really want an auto pilot to keep the ship on course to a space port in supercruise and be able to do the frameshift jumps for my plotted course via the galaxy map.
I don't expect a sidewinder, an eagle or a viper to have an auto-pilot dynamic.
I also don't want it to do everything else like fight pirates or enemies.
As for interdictions it would be an RNG roll from when the pilot was hired.

 

[Lestat]

lol. Yeah, I usually fit the largest fuel scoop I can affix to my ship. I've timed my average hyperspace jump, scooping and all, to about one-and-a-half minutes. The amount of time that I'm required to actually pilot my ship during that time period is about 20 seconds. That gives me 70 seconds of snooze time.

Sounds like you have a bad connection. My Anaconda has grade 5 fuel scoop and able to jump in 30 to 45 seconds.

I'm ex-military. I can sleep standing up or even when marching.

Had family members who was in the military and never seen them sleep. In a short amount of time. Maybe you should have it check out.

I'm on my what must be about my 7th trip to Colonia right now and believe me it's just as engaging as it sounds. Totally my choice of course but I really want my FAS out there and I'm not willing to pay the transfer cost. Given my current jump range it take about an hour to travel 1,000 light-years. That's a 22 hour trip. If I can sleep most of the way there then that's just a bonus ... especially since I work nights and weekends. Sleep is at a premium. I get it wherever and whenever I can.

I would of payed for the transfer cost if I had a ship that can to point A to point B faster. The basic scan from advanced Discovery scanner. Would of covered most if not all the costs.

I never actually said anything about autopilot in my post. I simply pointed out that much of my playing Elite involved me NOT actually playing. Ever fly to Hutton Orbital? Most of the trip your already essentially "on autopilot". In principle I'm against anything that allows you to earn credits or gain rank without being physically present at the controls.

I started playing in Pre Alpha stage. I am also part of hutton orbital truckers

If Frontier were to implement some kind of autopilot feature I wouldn't want it to be able perform any kind of scan for you. You'd get zero credits or "experience" for exploration data. It would have to work in a way that prevents the player from interacting with the controls to prevent a macro from "honking" while the autopilot is in possession of the ship as well. Basically: Zero reward for using autopilot.

That why I suggested Auto pilot would work if the player able to walk around the ship tweaking and Repairing things in the ship. So the player can't just stand still and let the game play it self.

FSD Autopilot should be in this game.

That is really boring to do a near 1800 jumps manually. (Passenger missions to COLONIA for example).

Easy fix don't accept those missions if they are boring to you. No Autopilot should not be in the game.

Playing the game != live in the game.
FSD travels for 50+ jumps is literally boring. Nothing todo more, when you simple going from point A to point B (jump from SOL to SOL).

If the game that boring. Then try other aspects of the game like combat as a bounty hunter or pirate or grind for engineered modules.

Hay UFO Reality. I seen Bots work and you can watch them go for 24/7 in other games. Gaining ores grinding or battling NPC and those games don't have autopilot. What companies do is ban those accounts. I rather have Frontier worry about real updates like Space legs or landing on Earth like worlds then have Auto pilot.

 

[UFO Reality]

Hay UFO Reality. I seen Bots work and you can watch them go for 24/7 in other games. Gaining ores grinding or battling NPC and those games don't have autopilot. What companies do is ban those accounts. I rather have Frontier worry about real updates like Space legs or landing on Earth like worlds then have Auto pilot.

I don't want auto everything. I just want to have the option of auto-pilot. I suggested that not all ships are able to have this feature either. I want to go to Colonia but I won't because the amount of jumps is too many and I don't really want to waste my energy or day looking at the same loading screens while being unproductive in real life. If you read my posts, I added suggestions to help stop the abuse by just having an NPC pilot having a dice roll to see how far the NPC will pilot the craft for you.

A lot of critics say this game is boring and I just want to help to take that boring bit out to get a better game with less useless activity due to the mechanics of the game. I am sure that the devs can think out how to make an autopilot feature that complements the game and balance it well. I still can't see the logic of watching the same loading screen over 10 times just to get to a computer generated star system. A lot of gamers just don't want to waste their energy sitting around doing that. They would rather play another game. I am willing to glance at the screen while waiting to get to the destination but I am not hot on manually having to be forced to look at that dot in the middle of witchspace over and over again just so I can bank left when there is a star in the way. What the hell does Frontier want to do? Hypnotise its players with that screen? It is a waste of time and not immersive. A NPC pilot would give better immersion because it makes sense like it would in real life.

 

[CMDR Spadino]

A lot of critics say this game is boring and I just want to help to take that boring bit out to get a better game with less useless activity due to the mechanics of the game. I am sure that the devs can think out how to make an autopilot feature that complements the game and balance it well.

I agree with you, in many respects. Certainly, an auto-pilot can be implemented, even if brutally bare bone. There's no doubt that, with already many poor implemented features - telepresence? multicrew? - some quality of life will be very welcomed.

Guys, we can have a civilized discussion in regard the details, than presents something interesting to the devs. Why not?

 

[UFO Reality]

I actually wonder how well this game is received by players on a console and not a PC. The competition with other games that are pure console games might crush this one in its current form without an auto pilot mechanism in its gameplay. Although, I have no idea what the statistics are or how patient and persistent the average console gamer is.

 

[Magic Man]

Nothing against an autopilot as such but it has to account for a number of things:-

It has to take the same game time it would take you or longer.

It has to account for and allow your ship to still be interdicted and scanned so needs you to remain logged in.

It has to follow the same fuel requirements so either requires you have enough fuel or has to also do auto-fuel scooping (so you obviously need a fuel scoop and it must plan a route via appropriate stars) - issue though since that always brings with it a certain amount of danger so would have to be limited by safety rules, i.e. it 'parks' at a certain distance to refuel - not the fastest scoop but has to remain safe within temperature. If temperature rises then it moves off on next jump.

Once you arrive at destination it must still leave you there in game, vulnerable to attack the same as every point along your journey.

If it follows the rules and same mechanics as you piloting it yourself so doesn't enable any sort of safe passage then, fine. Trouble is you'd get people moaning then that their ship was interdicted and destroyed whilst they were away from the keyboard...

 

[yodajedifishmaster]

the autopilot will get you killed. if it comes across a situation its AI cannot handle such as jumping into the heat zone between two stars, or 3 stars in a close trinary. i get that when exploring i am at the controls. i can see the path out and go for it. an AI autopilot might just do the normal thing, turn to move past the nearest star at normal supercruise to open up the jump vector. now that move may reduce heat and move far enough from the primary - but if the auto-pliot triggers the FSD jump and your move has left you in the heat zone of a second or third star, you are going to get fried.

there is also the argument why not automate it all and then you dont even have to play. thats the logical end step of this train of thought. and the logical next step to that is, save yourself the money of buying and just watch others play on youtube in full screen. now while i dont subscribe fully to these arguments there is an element of truth to it.

on the flip side, an autopilot would work if it was possible to avoid star systems with close secondary stars. no risk of damage. such a system would make for instance, travelling to colonia or to Sag A* when you dont feel like properly exploring and scanning and just want to go see it, a lot less boring. you could put the star 999ly away as target and assuming the autopliot knows how to safely scoop let it do the boring travelling. and even better on the return to the bubble if you know you are travelling a route many others have already done and that there will be little to first discover on the way. but idk if this is sufficient reason to include an autopilot.

 

[UFO Reality]

After more though about an autopilot for ED. I am more convinced that an AI co-pilot available ship would be a better option.

1] This would help to alleviate the problems of the monotonous and repetitive amount of frame-shift jumps that is piloted manually by the player whilst letting a player to be able to be more productive while playing the game. ( I suggest running on a treadmill while watching the screen as you travel to the destination. It may give the impression that your monitor is the portal to space for those with a good imagination ).

2] It may add some relief for explorers who need a break.

3] It enhances the crew system that the game already has.

The AI co-pilot should have a skill level that will determine its ability to help pilot the ship. This can be done by an RNG roll similar to engineer mods.

The initial RNG game roll criteria will determine the following:

i/ amount of jumps pilot will do in a row.
ii/ ability to pilot out of interdictions.
iii/ a percentage of the profits from any inventory in the cargo hold that is picked up while the pilot is employed and is active. This can be modded to a RNG roll everytime profits are taken from a trade.
iv/ loyalty of pilot. This means that the co-pilot will be likely to resign randomly if the RNG roll for this criteria is low. FD can make up a dialogue that may say the pilot got a better offer or just can't stand your smell or if you have a good roll, is
in love with you.

Other criteria:

Not all ships are able to hire a co-pilot. OPTIONAL: explorer ships have a cryo-sleep capsule function where the jumps will take the same amount of time except you can log out of the game.
Ship CMDR has to do all the fuel management. This means CMDRS have to purchase extra fuel tanks or do the fuel scooping manually. (this is to prevent bot cheaters. hopefully.)

What the AI co-pilot will do:

i/ Pilot the ship in real time doing the plotted amount of frame-shifts as determined by their initial RNG roll from first being hired.
ii/ Keep the ship on course to a space port but at half speed due to insurance policy.
iii/ Attempt to win interdictions according to its skill as determined by initial RNG roll when first being hired.
iv/ Alert the captain of danger from any pirates or enemy within range. AI co-pilot will bail from ship if no order is given after being interdicted and ship hull is under 30%.
v/ Occasionally give warnings or make threats of resignation as determined by loyalty RNG roll if CMDR uses co-pilot too often. Determined by RNG.
vi/ Occasionally attempt to haggle the CMDR for a better deal with profits by playing a mini game of space dice. Highest roll wins.
vii/ The co-pilot will halt the ship within the orbital distance or near the destination selected and alert CMDR.


Well that is pretty much it.

What do you guys think? Would be happy to hear from any person who can make such a thing possible in the game.

If others hate the idea then I am still happy for Frontier to release it as a paid DLC. Hopefully costing under AUD$10. Capitalism and democracy for 3303. o7

Any other details to be ironed out can be sorted by further brainstorming and testing if such a concept is taken up further for the game.