My apologies if this has been suggested elsewhere, but I think showing some sort of in-sector coordinates could solve a few things I'd like to see:

1. Tagging of asteroids. I'd like to be able to (somehow) know where that great roid I found was in the sector, and lead people to it. Downside - all the good asteroids would eventually be found and shared amongst others.

2. Rendezvous. Instead of having to form a group with people to gain the advantage of knowing where they are, you can arrange to meet at certain coordinates

There are probably some other ways this information would be used. There has to be some method that this is currently tracked by the engine, and even something as coarse as a 100m grid would be helpful, without being overly detailed. I'd see the center of a sector as 0,0,0 and you'd have positive or negative numbers depending on your location.

So what do you think?

We used to have that. The problem is that it allowed the creation of bots which players used to trade and stuff. Not at all fair. I'd instead reccommend that we be allowed to drop "buoys".

Good point on the bots; I hadn't thought of that aspect of it. I'm trying to think if it'd be best if only you (and maybe groupmates) could see your buoys, or everyone could. Probably private would be better, just to reduce clutter.

Beyond that, maybe some nominal charge for buoys, a number for each of your buoys, and some way to pick them up / destroy them.

The downside is that starts to clutter up the game and controls. Maybe in the end it's just a pipe dream.

Not if buoys are client-side (ie: the server has nothing to do with them) and self-destruct after x amount of time.

actually if the "bouy" coordinates were stored client side and only visible to the player, they wouldnt be a problem as far as clutter goes.

the problem then goes right back to bots again. any information stored locally with the coordinates of bouys would be usable for an auto-nav system. maybe if you were limited to 3-5 bouys per sector and they were non-targetable, eg you had to navigate to them visually.

its an interesting problem. everyone wants it, but we dont want bots that can allow people to do stuff while they arent even at their computers either.

I can't see bots being a problem with buoys. Not if they were stored in a compressed/encrypted form and they didn't output anything to errors.log besides, maybe "buoy dropped". It'd be damned hard to make a bot that could do character recognition on the screen bitmap to determine the direction to go. If someone made a bot that could do that, they wouldn't need to reference buoys, eh? :)

hmmm, maybe rogue. as long as the bouys were non-targetable items it would probably work out ok. if they are targetable, then you just have to set up your bouys ahead of time and you can write a bot that could target them in a series and follow them that way.

One possible fix to the bot issue: (I don't know all the ins and outs of the bots, so there may be other issues)
Don't allow buoys within a certain range of a station. I'm not sure how people would dock a bot with a station, but in an extreme example, you could disable them in systems with stations.

The downside there is that you can't chart asteroids in station systems, but it'd be a step forward.

There are certainly some interesting wrinkles to this one.

I don't see what the big deal is. Bot issue? What would Bots have to do with beacons? All the buoys need to do is mark a location. They could be private to each player and could easily be kept track of. A simple set of 3-D coordinates that show up on radars.

How about being able to place locator beacons on various objects, or just floating in space? It would require some changes to the code, but I think having some kind of device to mark your favorite mining asteroid, or to act as a rallying point for a group, or maybe (advanced) to track another ship? Just ideas...

Up to others as to whether these beacons would be public (visible to everyone) or private (visible to only a guild or group or individual).

It would be even better to be able to attach messages to the beacons. That way it would be like leaving a message for others.

Not being a programmer, I have no idea how hard this would be to implement, but on the surface it seems rather easy to do. If necesssary, limit the number of beacons that players can place, make them pick up one before placing another.

Bots here doesn't refer to the Hive Bots we fight in game, but rather to automated systems to play the game unattended. So if I can get the coordinates, I can use them to set it up so my ship mines, goes back to station, sells ore, goes back to mining, etc, back and forth, without me actually playing.

A bot could not follow a buoy that was targettable. It'd be impossible. The bot could follow something like our old hippos function. But a buoy needs no targeting restrictions.

A solution to the bot problem would be making the system not accurate enough to let a bot dock. An accuracy of +- 500m would be plenty accurate to find your roid, but way to inaccurate to allow a bot to enter a docking bay.

I just want to be able to have a notes section in the navigation map so i can write down notes about certain sectors and what not. This is simpler, much less (possibly not at all) exploitable, likely easier to implement, and more multipurpose than buoys. I find roids out of matchin sun position and angle to a a large easily identifiable roid i know to be in the system.

Expounding on that, I wouldnt mind the ability to be able to target something, press k, and leave a note about that specific object either. You could use that to hasten mining of sectors you have already went through and scanned before, as well as keep track of roids you have an havnt scanned, as well as use it with players to mark KOS, not KOS, etc,etc

I like your idea Tramshed. Keeping notes in the sector maps would be a lot easier than the scribbling I'm doing in a notebook now, and that would certainly help mining out. I'd even think this would require minimal work for the devs, but IANAP.

What do you mean a player could create a bot to find the roid?

Otherwise I like this idea, and tram's idea of notes even more.

SECTOR LOCATION GPS
Well I still think the marker buoys are a good idea and don't know why it would be hard to implement.

HOWEVER, After talking with Yasumoto, he suggested an EXCELLENT idea that will go along with tramshed's idea of notes, and the idea of having buoys.

Just have a readout of coordinates for where you are in-sector. X, Y, and Z values from a centerpoint or cornerpoint. Like a GPS. You can note where good roids are and also note things like how far away you are from a station, etc.

This is the easy-to-do FIRST step towards the path of having marked waypoints/buoys/etc. Simply tell the players where they are in-sector. The game is constantly tracking that anyway, just display the running values somewhere.

Then you could move to the second step of buoys (which could be purchased like cargo, but one player has a maximum of 10 or so he/she could have active at any one time, and only the player can see those) and then the third step of waypoints which could be used for course plotting.

Now the cool FOURTH step: Ideally a course could be plotted BEFORE leaving a station in a 3-D environment. Just have a wireframe 3-D navigation model of that sector that the pilot "flies" through, plotting straight-line waypoints for an autopilot. Then upon leaving the station, the autopilot is switched on (or is automatically on) and the ship flies itself around obstacles and to its favorite 'roid to mine.

Baby steps. Let's get the XYZ "GPS" readout feature done first, should be an easy easy easy thing to do.

LeberMac, you didn't read carefully enough. Broadcasting the x, y, z coordinates of your ship allows people to script their clients so that the ship flies itself. That's why people are suggesting non-targetable buoys instead.

Apparently I did not read enough AND do not understand the full capabilities of this game.
Are you saying that (if the game "broadcasted" the coordinates) there is a way to write a script that will automatically fly the ships around? As in: 1)leave station and go to x,y,z 2) Engage mining laser for 3 minutes 3) go to x2,y2,z2 station entrance 4) unload and sell all 5) Repeat.
I want to learn to do this, then. Someone - contact me to discuss this scripting ability.

There is a way to do that. It's called CHEATING.

My dad and I talked about the buoys idea some time ago, and decided not to suggest it yet. Basicly like mines they would have a battery life and they would only work in groups. Whether you are mining, botting, trading, whatever. The reason it would only work in groups, would make co-op play a bit more important if you wanted to use this. You could also explain the group only aspect of the buoy in game as something along the lines that they use a secure channel only known by the computer of the ship that dropped them, which also transmits the code to those in your group.

Then again you could take the group aspect out and make them usable by a single person, but if they are used in the group the whole group can benefit.

We had this conversation some time ago so I don't remember the entire conversation. It came up because he and I group mine often as do a couple of our other guild members.

Also tramshed I like your note idea, would allow guilds to dump trade, bot, and mining surveys into those note fields you suggested.