Some of those trade missions can be such a drag specially if your cargo bay is tiny, an AutoPilot feature can help us automatically get to another station or station on another sector/planet without having to do it manually. This type of technology is common in space sims.

It can be. But then again, so is everything else in the game.

Oh please, dear Gods, let the traders start doing this. Yessssss!

Hehehe... pirate fodder :-)

Whistler you live for that I can tell ;-)

More specifically:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/14357

When I was playing EVE, if there was one cool thing about it, it would of been the autopilot for traveling. I just had to make this post that specifically had the title Autopilot. :)

EVE? you mean that game you can play without actually playing it?

Those who mention EvE in here will be pointed out, laughed at and held in contempt.

Just don't do it.

it's a common pet peve.

I'm all for autopilot... traders will wreck the economies inside nation space, be forced into grey space, and then get picked off by pirates...

It actually seems like a really good cost-benefit situation.

Traders pay attention to the game when there's excitement (Running the hell away from us dastardly deviants in grey), and otherwise, they will be able to spend more time planning.

If you don't require people to be in control all the time, people will spend a LOT more time online.

Was SuperMegaMynt not testing an Autopilot bind some while back? I could have sworn I was certain...

binds are not comprehensive enough, code wise, to be possible to make an autopilot with. lua or injected code of some other code, could.

All we need is /displayshippos turned back on, and an autopilot is a done deal.

There used to be a binds-based autopilot (using displayshippos). No longer, though. And good riddance. Introduce an autopilot and gameplay becomes a "who's the best LUA programmer" competition. Boring.

we're dangerously close to that already, rogue.

Not binds-based Rogue, some external program. But oh well.

Autopilot would be interesting through pirate-goggles, but eh. I wouldn't use it, but it sounds like lots of others would.

You know, for all the people that take shots at Eve, you would think that we don’t actually want to have the 18308 PAYING PLAYERS online at the time of this posting. Do the math on what that would mean for guild software and their ability to hire people.

This “we are better than them because” elitism is so freaking pathetic when you look at our paltry 21 players at the same time. Grow up

What do the purist pilots care if space gets filled with AKF traders, miners or any other AFK player type? Right now we have NPC trade fleets that are forced to be generated just to attempt to make space look busy. Better that role is filled by paying players mindless bots, instead of simply server generated non-paying mindless bots.

What does a purest pilot care if 30, 60, 90 percent of space is filled with people who only jump into a cockpit to fly to the next system and set up their mining drones? So what!!!

And for that matter, what does a purist pilot care, if some person/guild has more money that they could possibly spend? Because unless the prices in this game drastically change, a person can earn enough cash in about 3 hours, to finance many hours of purist pilot fighting.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. If space quake was going to be enough to make this game popular, then that would have already happened. As it is, the growth, though steady, is nothing like what it will take for this game to reach critical mass.

-roguelazer
“Introduce an autopilot and gameplay becomes a "who's the best LUA programmer" competition. Boring.”

What aspect of gameplay is that? The fighting, which for the most part is all this game is about ATM? I don’t think so. The Diamond Dodge bind didn’t make it so. Nor is there a library of diamond dodge style binds available, that a player could get by on just by using. You don’t see people complaining that the bind using players overwhelm the standard players, nor those programming in LUA.

This game has got to begin to appeal to other types of players than just the combat purists. The game model, combat style, and basic under architecture will insure that this game doesn’t just become another Eve. The very nature of twitch prevents that.

But if this game is going to appeal to a larger audience, then yes, it does need things like auto pilot, and other AFK tools. (Player scheduled convoys, mining slaves, etc….) There are many potential customers just waiting to fill in the jobs currently done by NPC’s. All that has to be done is the tools be given to them.

Ironically, with the LUA open, the only tool needed would be a re-activation of /getshippos. Just look at what Nautargos built with the SCAR shop, and Scubas toolkit and all the other LUA stuff done in just a few short weeks.

Either this game is going to grow, and live, and be all that we hope it can be, or it is going to die. I would rather the former, and giving more people access to different styles of play, would go along way to opening up the game to new players interested in other things than a best pilot pissing contest.

[Edit] "purist" Thanks Ryan

PsyRa, the point of the argument VO vs EvE is not about the AFK-ness of certain activities. It is about the difference in combat style, or at least that is what I distilled of the numerous bouts pertaining to the aforementioned topic.

EvE is just a taboo here. Don't mention it, move on.

Also (already having mentioned it), EvE does not have a Mac version. So screw it.

Great post PsyRa.