Newcomer / Intro Team Nav Lock - Basic Guide?

[WesBrook77]

Does anyone have a link or some advice on how to correctly use the Nav Lock function? My team-mate and I have tried to get this thing working several different ways, but it never does. Maybe there is a misunderstanding on our part of what Nav Lock actually is, but so far as I can recall, it allows one team member to essentially do the navigating, and team-mates follow jumps etc. automatically. On the face of it we are doing all the right things: forming the team, being in regular flight, being close enough to get the blue box, beacons active, etc., but when the lead player engaged FSD or jumps, the other does not follow.

There is probably a really simple step to this that we are just missing somehow, but try as we might, we cannot get the wing to jump or navigate together. We've also searched the forums here, reddit, youtube and google, but cannot find a definitive guide.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

 

[metatheurgist]

For the follow to work the rest of the team need to have the range to jump to the target is one limitation. But not enough info to know what the problem is specifically with your team.

 

[WesBrook77]

We just need to understand the process/procedure, really. Only myself and one other in the Team, I have the lower jump range so doing the navigation, and we're within close proximity of each other.

If I understand it correctly, we have all the steps in place, but without a comprehensive guide, we cannot say for certain. Nav Lock just seemingly doesn't work for us, but I'm certain we're missing something "obvious".

 

[Codger]

I have no experience with Nav Lock, but there are a lot of discussions about it (for years). From what I gather it's quite buggy and has been.

Here's a couple I found that might have useful info. YMMV

edtutorials.com - edtutorials Resources and Information.

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Teams

Teams allow commanders and NPCs to fly together in a group of up to 4 ships. Teams gain multiple benefits via roles. For example, traders can be escorted by teammates for extra security, and the escorts will earn 5% of the trader's profit from selling commodities. Teammates can lock onto each...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/exh8qq

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/exh8qq/proper_use_of_wingman_navlock/

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/ahc8cw

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/ahc8cw/wingman_navlock_what_is_it_used_for/

 

[WesBrook77]

Thanks for the links, Codger. I've just read through them all, some I had come across is previous searches.

Besides the Nav Lock system seemingly being quite buggy for several years, I still do not see a procedure for successfully using it. On the surface it seems very simple: team up, get in range, engage Nav Lock then jump/drop together, but the reality is this process simply does not work. My team-mate's FSD never slaves to mine (or vice-versa). It seems pointless to just use Nav Lock for dropping to the same instance, as there are other methods already for doing this, so the main benefit to Nav Lock that I can see is to maintain a formation of sorts whereby the team jumps together. For instance, escorting a cargo ship, interdictions, dropping to mission objectives, etc..

I'm still confused as to what the process is. I understand what it should do, and how it should work, but it never does. If there was a step by step guide, maybe we could eliminate (or confirm) user error.

 

[HRDiagram]

I have been out with a friend, and eventually I figured how it works.
As you mention, sometimes it is buggy, but in the majority of the cases it is just fine.
It can work in two ways: automatic and manual.
Automatic: come within a few ls of the wake of the leading ship and the FSD engages automatically
Manual: when the leading ship has jumped, select the wake and engage the FSD (basically the wake is scanned automatically).
In any case, once the FSD is engaged, turn the ship to point towards the target in the target reticle, and not towards the wake.

It also works to exit Supercruise: get close enough and you drop where the leading ship has dropped.

More often than not, my wingmate has "Oooops" moments where he leaves SC rather than engaging the hyperdrive, so I found myself very often in realspace.
Also, he's very good at crashing on stars, so I follow.

 

[Krieger]

...<snip>

It also works to exit Supercruise: get close enough and you drop where the leading ship has dropped.

<snip>...

And in addition you can fly towards your wing member's low-wake at full throttle and still drop on top of him. Very handy if you need to be quick, e.g. after your wing member got interdicted.

 

[ZeroAi]

We use Team Nav Lock quite a bit, and it is quirky.

The best feature is the "auto-dropout".

- The way we use it is, we both go looking for Threat 5 Non-Human Signal sources in the same system in supercruise.

- Whoever finds a good USS is the one who the others lock on. So if I find the Threat 5 first, my buddy locks on me.

- As soon as he has confirmed he's locked, I drop out to scan the Thargoid.

- If my teammate is close enough (but still much much farther away than a normal dropout of 1 to 10mm) he will drop out too, and right next to me.

- If he's hundreds of LS away, he just flies towards me until he auto-drops out.

The process that doesn't work well imo is the "follower mode."

My friend and I once jumped all the way to Colonia, and we found the nav-lock follower mode is really bad :-(

- In this example teammate 2 locks on to teammate1

- When teammate 1 jumps, teammate 2's FSD will charge, and if he's close enough to where teammate 1 jumped, he'll also jump when fully charged.

- The first problem is teammate 2's FSD doesn't START charging when teammate 1 does. No, teammate 2's FSD starts charging AFTER teammate 1 actually jumps.

- The second problem is you have to be crazy close to your teammate to jump as soon as your FSD is charged. If you're not, you have to chase down teammate 1's wake.

- In both cases, teammate 1 is sitting in the new system waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting for teammate 2.

- To make things worse, you can't come to a stop in supercruise, so while teammate 1 is waiting he is also getting farther and farther from where teamamte 2 will emerge (unless he starts flying in circles, which for me makes the waiting even worse!)

So after several jumps, and having to chase our teammate for longer and longer distances, we gave up on nav lock.

And no, if teammate 1 jumps before teammate 2 enters the system, there is no teammate 1 wake to follow.

In summary, the nav lock for dropping out is pretty awesome (it gets your buddies really close to where you drop out without having to get within 10mm) and also super helpful with Thargoids since you and your teammate will NOT see the same USSs, making nav lock the best way to come out in the same place.

But as we found out on our way to Colonia, the follower mode isn't so great (well, unless the invisible nav lock manual has a trick in it we don't know about... ?)

IMO To fix it the follower mode for nav lock, FDEV would need to start the follower's FSD charging when the leader starts charging his. This would likely make all the difference, but after 6 years of playing we ain't holding our breaths.

Fly safe CMDR!

 

[Esteban]

I will look at the links referenced above but my main question (at least for now) using Nav-lock is whether / when I'm supposed to 'select' the wake signal

 

[WesBrook77]

Thanks for all the contributions here, much appreciated.

"Follower Mode" as described by ZeroAi is principally how we wanted to use Nav Lock, and it's a shame that the system currently is not intuitive at all in this regard. Dropping in to an instance is indeed easier and generally works well, but so far as travelling outwards together goes, Nav Lock clearly needs some improvement. Hopefully FDEV have some updates in the works, though it would appear this subject has been raised several times over several years, without a proper overhaul.

There needs to be a clear procedure published on the exact steps required to make Nav Lock work, though again if FDEV ever intended this, I'm sure the information would be available by now. If my team-mate and I ever get the system working consistently by following certain steps, then we will write a guide.