When you realise after 400hrs that Supercruise Assist is actually an autopilot...
- Thread starter Ryder7
- Start date
I'm not sure when they started adding that module to new ships, but I was surprised to find one in a ship I bought a couple of years ago. The first thing I did when arriving at my destination, one jump away was to remove the accursed thing and reclaim my module space for something useful.
But, eh. I'm sure there are plenty of people that like the Supercruise Assist. I just can't fly with it. That's a me problem though.
[edit: there's no "d" in remove, I really ought to read what I've written before hitting enter.]
But, eh. I'm sure there are plenty of people that like the Supercruise Assist. I just can't fly with it. That's a me problem though.
[edit: there's no "d" in remove, I really ought to read what I've written before hitting enter.]
I dunno, can real-life autopilots found on commercial aircraft do that? I thought they just did things like keep the plane on a particular heading and at a particular altitude.
I actually find the orbit feature to be rather irritating if I'm coming in to land at a surface site, which is most of the time when I'm flying around the bubble. I wish there was an alternate setting which just stopped you near the planet and let you manually fly the rest of the way around and down.
But apart from that I really like the Supercruise Assist module, if I had to choose between that and AutoDock, I'd go for the SCA. At least manual docking is more engaging than watching a number change.
i tried it when it was first out didnt like it then thought manual was the way to go,but am leaning to-wards after reading these posts.
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
Well no I don't think they can, but then real life ones don't have to account for travelling at multiple times the speed of light either
With the flight model in Elite there's no need to worry about heading and altitude/speed, because you can point in a direction at a throttle setting and the ship will do that for you without a SCA.I've not used it to land on a planet myself, so I can imagine it's a bit different. I guess it depends on where on the planet the base is in relation to your approach. If it's on the other side it could be nice to slowly loop around towards it.
I would certainly argue that manual Supercruise approaches aren't engaging though
They do way more than that: takeoff, cruise and landing can all be totally automatic.
I don't do that anymore after I decelerated a few times through the station interior. This is too terrifying in VR.
ok you have convinced me ,fitting cruise assisst to my ship fora go. i always take them out on a new ship.
I accidentally discovered the feature yesterday while explaining the basis of the game to a friend that just has started it.
But this is also the good example of why I appreciate how ED lets you choose if you want to use something or not:
While I played plane sims for years and enjoy manual piloting the spaceships and such things like dogfights, and first thing I did was to setup my old hotas and rudders, said friend on the contrary is having quite the struggle with controls and is not onto combat things, nor space or plane sim concepts so he does enjoy having autodoc and SCassist. And more importantly, this allows a very beginner to focus on things like panels, menus, game concepts and so on, and once at ease, to try other aspects like manual flying, and then FA off, and so on, chapter by chapter instead of everything infodumped.
IRL autopilots do crazy things nowadays, and also let you choose only one parameter to be automated if you want. It happened to me only once to wish I had such a feature like waypoint hold when I had to go for some small station in the very far end of a vast system and wanted to check something with Inara at the same time, but had to alt tab constantly because the ship was drifting a bit and I was affraid to overshoot.
Well, once again, whenever I think there is something missing in ED, the said thing is in fact somewhere I missed. This game is constantly outsmarting me in every way.
But this is also the good example of why I appreciate how ED lets you choose if you want to use something or not:
While I played plane sims for years and enjoy manual piloting the spaceships and such things like dogfights, and first thing I did was to setup my old hotas and rudders, said friend on the contrary is having quite the struggle with controls and is not onto combat things, nor space or plane sim concepts so he does enjoy having autodoc and SCassist. And more importantly, this allows a very beginner to focus on things like panels, menus, game concepts and so on, and once at ease, to try other aspects like manual flying, and then FA off, and so on, chapter by chapter instead of everything infodumped.
IRL autopilots do crazy things nowadays, and also let you choose only one parameter to be automated if you want. It happened to me only once to wish I had such a feature like waypoint hold when I had to go for some small station in the very far end of a vast system and wanted to check something with Inara at the same time, but had to alt tab constantly because the ship was drifting a bit and I was affraid to overshoot.
Well, once again, whenever I think there is something missing in ED, the said thing is in fact somewhere I missed. This game is constantly outsmarting me in every way.
Always wondered how you 'd do that trick?
It seems from about 2ls out of your target, you can have SCA locked and then just full throttle the rest of the way. It's not a massive saving at that distance, beyond that I've found the auto-aiming a bit off and it'll often overshoot.
basically, turn off throttle control for SCA, burn towards the station, and instead of six or seven seconds, go to 75% at like two or three seconds (don't remember the exact value, and seems to depend a bit on your speed). SCA takes over and yanks you out of supercruise at the station. As long as you get close enough while under SCA control, your speed doesn't matter for SCA to get you out.
Add attitude, climb/sink rate and you're spot on. They often have ground collision alert but could never navigate a helo or Cessna around skyscrapers. For that you need eyes and ears and the faster you go the faster the reaction needs to be. Pilots fly with their rear. They feel the plane. They use their experience. An algorithm cannot do this. Self-driving cars are autopilots struggling with complex situations.
X4 has a decent autopilot, but they actually coded it to comment "autopilot epic failure detected" when you collide with an asteroid. Often it does navigate you around - the impression of the NPC actually steering the ship is believable. Then it fails spectacularly when confronted with too many conflicting problems in too short a time and it jerks this way that way and none of those automated routines hepl and you bump into something. As consequence collision damage was deactivated.
A quick Google concerning automatic spaceships tells me the following :
For beginners, an automaticcar spaceship might be a better option. More experienced drivers pilots who want more autonomy in their driving flying experience might prefer to get a manual car spaceship. Of course, it would be great to try both types of cars spaceships in both contexts to see how they suit your driving flying habits.
Supercruise Assist will need more frequent and more expensive maintenance. Advanced-SCA's have a relatively shorter lifetime than SCA's of the same make and model. Less Control – Unlike manualtransmission spaceships, automatic transmission spaceships offer the driver pilot a limited sense of control.
For beginners, an automatic
Supercruise Assist will need more frequent and more expensive maintenance. Advanced-SCA's have a relatively shorter lifetime than SCA's of the same make and model. Less Control – Unlike manual
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Very useful for me when approaching stations/megaships/FC. When about 5 ly away enter assist and let it disengage.