Now that, sir, is a very good idea.
Why does my 34th century spaceship have no autopilot OR how do you accept the hyperjump grind?
- Thread starter sc_neo
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Now that, sir, is a very good idea.
Curiously, the answer is within my quote.
So when the Galaxy is filled with engaging and interesting phenomenon in the future(dreams)you want FD to allow you to bypass all of it?
I think the game does need auto-pilot because doing jumps manually after 2000 f'kin hours of gaming time is bulsit but I also agree that it would kill the game mechanic. AP can be integrated into ED with limitations/caveats and with some care.
1/ Auto-Pilot hyperspace jumps are only available to star-systems already visited and logged by the Galaxy map. No exploration bypass here.
2/ AP does not include fuel scooping. You plan the trip.
3/ AP will still cause your ship to be vulnerable to attack/interdiction when using it during super cruise.
4/ AP does not decrease time it takes to do travel manually and only available in open mode and while in-game. (You can sleep but the ship computer must be online).
5/ AP will only slowdown at the star-port or dock destination in SC and will still require pilot to come out of SC. Because ED is about piloting a spaceship.
6/ AP only available to specific ships and/or be rank locked for an engineer to make it available to your ship. ( Extra grind so that it keeps with ED's motto )
7/ AP only available when ship's mass is under x-amount to prevent easy trading automation. Fully loaded ships need manual piloting anywhere. At least the return trip will be easier if you are not loaded up and keep trading relevant as missions can be more profitable than trading.
These caveats will not be a cheat but a method to help keep the game balanced and take the absurdity out of ED and actually make its game design look more refined.
I would cautiously agree with AP under those conditions. I say cautiously because once you let it in people will be campaigning for it to be changed. As I have said in many previous discussions I am not 100% against all forms of faster travel, what I am against all forms of faster travel that allow for carefree movement between two places, and I really am not that worried about how easy it is to get hold of, but any attempt to travel to distant places that have never been visited, even if it is between two known places but passes through unexplored systems, should almost be on the level of intentional suicide.
The problem of money is always going to exist though and the increased ability to earn money would have to be offset. A smart trader using his wits and skills should always be able to make a profit above a AP run that requires no personal interaction, and I am not sure the game in it's current state will support that. However the current demand for AP is simply to remove any necessary interaction or danger from say a run to Colonia, and that I am against. People basically want to start an AP run to Colonia, go to bed and wake up next day in Colonia, thus removing all sense of adventure and distance from the equation.
Quite the oposite, I want there to be a time investment when travelling.
What I'm saying is, we do that already, we're already on Netflix. People already skip over things and leave it to the people that enjoy stopping at every or most systems to see if there's something to check out. Of course people will always complain, but there's always going to be a limit to what's acceptable. The community wouldn't let instant ship delivery happen, so why would it let infinite jump range happen?
What makes you think it will ever be filled with it? We haven't even seen how Q4 is going to turn out, we just know a couple things they are looking at. Some of you keep turning autopilot into wormhole travel, I'm not asking for that myself, I don't think there are many who would want that, just something I can engage when I don't feel like staring at the screen, mindlessly jump/scooping to a destination. The more reasonable requests aren't even asking for any of the time investment to be taken away, just not as manual. Quit arguing back with extremes, it isn't helping.
That's incorrect. You know modern planes have autopilot right? Does that make the 12 hour trip to Germany any shorter? No, no it doesn't.
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I can sleep through the trip to Germany.
If I can sleep through a trip to Sag A* then it makes all parts of the galaxy the same.
It's a cool idea, but I don't feel it's the solution. Better than nothing, but it does require coordination with someone else and it can be a problem scheduling these sorts of things.
Maybe I should make the autopilot I'm interested in clear. I'd want the most basic implementation of it. While completely leaving the individual loads behind would be extra neat, I would be completely fine with it simply doing what we do now. You set your destination, engage autopilot, it aligns and jumps for you until you need fuel, autopilot disengages if the next jump would leave you stranded (or just leave it at something we need to personally pay attention to, fine with both), you top up and then engage autopilot again. All it would do is lower the amount of manual inputs, we can still have it so we need to monitor the situation, we're still vulnerable to interdictions and jet cones, not unlike modern pilots.
The step further would do the straight jump to your next fuel stop. To add caveats to it, it would have to take the same amount of time it does now, so instead of many shorter loading screens, you get a longer one, no shortcuts and it must drop you into the next system where you would need fuel. Option being that you can have it drop you at the next available system along your route should you need to.
Furthermore, if you log off in both situations, your trip is over, you'll be where you were when you logged off.
So, I'm personally interested in the simple solution, the one where we still have to be available for fuel concerns and the one that doesn't add shortcuts to time or range. This is the autopilot I'm defending, not wormholes or time portals. Also, once again, I'm under no illusion that asking for it is going to make it happen. I've already seen this discussion many times and I know Frontier isn't interested. It's still a dream though and I've seen it work in other space games where the integrity and scale isn't lost at all.
Well, I never asked to be allowed to log off and sleep through the game. More to that, doesn't being able to sleep on the trip to Germany make all parts of the World the same? Wouldn't you much rather 'fly' the 'adventure' yourself? Probably not right? If you would, why don't you? Also, when just flying to Sag A*, the galaxy essentially is the same since all you're doing is jumping toward it and seeing the same stars (and only the stars) along the way. Autopilot doesn't have to stop you from doing what you normally do along the way, you seem to keep trying to argue that it would, but it's not what I'm asking for. Maybe it's a bit of what the OP is after, but not me. I'm all for reasonable implementation.
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What I think is that (some) people would like exploration to be :
1) slow paced
2) skill based
3) involved
At the moment, it's slow paced but not skill based. And player involvement is really low in most of it.
A slow paced and challenging gameplay does work. One of the best case I've seen so far is the long dark. It's slow, deadly and definitly not "playable" while doing netflix.
Sag A* can definitly be Netflixed through. What's the investment then ?
On issue I have with ED exploration related navigation (i.e. finding routes) is that it's close to inexistant. Why ? Because the galaxy is "flat" in the sense of having no terrain
complicating the navigation and requiring planing and skill (except the formidine rift pre-engineers and the outer rim).
I'm all for a reasonable implementation too - but not everybody 'requesting' and autopilot feels that way.
As an example, something that only works on systems with Nav Beacons would leave exploration unaffected while taking the grind out of cross-Bubble travel.
No, no... I was definitely right. It's definitely an analogy. Go look it up in a dictionary if you think I'm still wrong.
What I think you have done is made a generalization. I'm one of the "people". I, however, am not arguing to make exploration easier. You've also made an assumption that somehow I'm trying to make a viewpoint that speaks on behalf of others. I am not, though I suspect some may share my view. What I am saying is that there are many times that I want to go from A to B and I simply do not care what is in the systems through which I pass. I really don't. When I'm making that 500ly jump out to Sothis (or whatever it is), I don't care what's in the systems between. I've seen the systems before. They're just computer generated planets that all look very similar to me. My purpose is to go to Sothis to trade/whatever. I'm not exploring there, I'm not exploring on the way. I want to get there without the mundanity of pressing J 20-30 times because that's just dull. I think there are ways of doing this in the game without much detriment; see the last line of my previous post. Maybe even some 400ly injectium element that I thought of after posting, that you can only carry one of.
Anyway, if you want to pick holes in someone else's reasons for 'tourism' or want to make a point that nothing would exist without other people who've chosen to explore systems w/e, go find their post and quote it because that would be more logical.
Once more, the time investment is what makes the perceived lenght of the trip, will people think that Sag A* is far away if you only need to push a button and then go to sleep?
By the way, pilots must still be aware and take note of weather, fuel levels, potential alarms, miscellaneous stuff so AP only helps to keep speed and altitude, sometimes direction, in other words, there must be somebody in charge at all times in the cabin.
The devil is on the details.
Yes, did you read the longer post where I explained which autopilot I wanted? Somewhat similar to real life autopilot, having nothing to do with logging off and going to sleep.. Or is this a TLDR situation where you can't be bothered to know why I'm saying what I'm saying simply because you oppose any implementation?
I apologize, I still don't agree with the proposal, one simple way to get around it is to use economy routes which will let you travel 1000 lys with a single input if you have enough jump range, once you reach the end of the route you'd refuel and plot the next point, to avoid strandings you could select a main sequence star since you'll have fuel for all your jumps so the last star may be the only concern.
Well said. Consider it this way: In the 1700's a sailing ship could travel for months/years even and reach somewhere that they haven't been before - they were called EXPLORERS. Now in 2018, we can travel exactly the same distance, from the same departure point to the same destination in 12 hours - we are called TOURISTS
I think the game does need auto-pilot because doing jumps manually after 2000 f'kin hours of gaming time is bulsit but I also agree that it would kill the game mechanic. AP can be integrated into ED with limitations/caveats and with some care.
1/ Auto-Pilot hyperspace jumps are only available to star-systems already visited and logged by the Galaxy map. No exploration bypass here.
2/ AP does not include fuel scooping. You plan the trip.
3/ AP will still cause your ship to be vulnerable to attack/interdiction when using it during super cruise.
4/ AP does not decrease time it takes to do travel manually and only available in open mode and while in-game. (You can sleep but the ship computer must be online
5/ AP will only slowdown at the star-port or dock destination in SC and will still require pilot to come out of SC. Because ED is about piloting a spaceship.
6/ AP only available to specific ships and/or be rank locked for an engineer to make it available to your ship. ( Extra grind so that it keeps with ED's motto )
7/ AP only available when ship's mass is under x-amount to prevent easy trading automation. Fully loaded ships need manual piloting anywhere. At least the return trip will be easier if you are not loaded up and keep trading relevant as missions can be more profitable than trading.
These caveats will not be a cheat but a method to help keep the game balanced and take the absurdity out of ED and actually make its game design look more refined.
Exactly this is what I am thinking of ,when talking about the "online only auto-jump-pilot" (excluding pt 6 and pt 7 as very special caveats).
I was thinking that this is the most widespread conception of auto-jump-pilot in the community. But as this thread shows, it's not entirely so.
Thanks for painting a clear picture what I think the words "auto-jump-pilot" actually would mean in-game.
The only purpose of auto-jump-pilot for me is that I can plan a route and set the AP to go, then being able to go and entertain the cats, have a chat with my wife, read the post, do some housework and when I return I will see my ship safely parked in normal space near my plotted end-destination star. A nice feature would be an option to make the game shut down on reaching destination, for increased safety.
If I was unlucky, doing AP in the bubble, maybe my ship would have been interdicted on it's way and been emptied by pirates hatch breakers or shot to pieces by other scoundrel. That's the risk of flying on AP and going away. I'd willingly take this risk while my ship was going from my home place in the bubble to some Guardian Systems or to the Pleiades or to whatever course I have set to reach my destination where I am headed to do my gaming session.
Saying this, I tried exploration and it's not for me. I play when I have time and when I see that online-friends are active. I want to get to the place where they are without much hassle. To bridge distances for me usually is only a major inconvenience before I can actually start playing. I know there are a lot of people out there who enjoy the game by traveling around aimlessly. I am just not that type and I would greatly rejoice about anything that makes getting from A to B less boring and repetitive and time wasting procedure.
I'd also applaud to an option to add automated fuel scooping. If not I'd definitely go for outfitting my ships with as many fuel-tanks as possible to increase my convenient auto-pilot range.
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regarding #6: I'd rather see the auto-pilot as a possible sub-module for a navigation-computer module available for any ship with only minor energy consumption, no weight and no heat generation please.
regarding #7: when auto-pilot is tied to open game and interdiction is possible I think there need not be any further deterrent to traders using AP...
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Now this is something I do want to see; to be fair I want the multicrew to be more engaging and useful in the game in general. The bridge of my ship already feels completely empty and while exploring this feature fills no purpose at all.
Exploring with multicrew would be a blessing and massive gameplay improvement.