How useful would the ability to transmit a nav route from player to player? The idea came up the other day when someone offered me an escort (in my bus 8-)), and I had to type out exactly what my route was going to be to him before going. For long, drawn out trade routes that skip through like 5 sectors in one system, across several systems, wouldn't this be handy?

Maybe.

Me likey. And I *promise* not to promptly sell the route to Shape or tramshed.

Hahaha, that's an interesting point! I hadn't thought of that aspect of it. You could over time convince someone to trust you as a trade ally, and then you could SELL THEIR INFORMATION TO THE ENEMY! Yarr!

I love this idea. Both sides of it.

It would be great for the escorter and the escortee, and it would also add a great new variable for pirates.

Cool idea, but perhaps instead of sharing nav routes, make it something like two ships computers getting on the same navigation frequency, allowing you to see thier planned route, then it would be an easier thing to transfer as you could sell thier ship frequency to others which would allow them to know exactly where you are. The ship frequency should be changeable, but only at stations where you are above +0 (Mainly just to make it so someone cant just flip channels constantly) Also, make it so when you do change channels its an entirely random channel picked out of a very large number, that way someone cant sit in a station and scan navigation channels to find where everyone is. Although for a semi-hefty fee due to complex programming work you could choose a specific channel, im just throwin a number out, but 20k should be enough to keep it from being abused too badly. Doing the last thing would still allow the sale of nav frequencies.

toy: navigation system info-extractor!
tells ya where the trader you've targeted is heading, and gives you their route info.

of course, the trader could give misleading info... ;)

hmm.... some sorta-simplification:

-groups share nav-info (maybe with a <publish> button on the map screen, thus making it voluntary?)

-add a </hack nav "group-leader"> and </hack chat "group-leader">?? (not sure how to do this fairly...give a high-% failure, or *shudder* add a new skill?? -- either way, both commands fail if the named player has no group attached to him..)

-maybe we can have a </group publish "pirate-name"> to publish groupchat and groupnav to a pirate that just paid you off??

erm.... *bumpy*?

I agree with the bumpy, because I think this would, for one, ease the whole escort and convoy trading business, as well as open up new avenues for pirating and sabotage (you know, tricking someone into thinking you're friendly, then going on and selling their trade route to a pirate).

This post gets a big fat bump. Bunch of guild-mates and I were discussing how tedious it is getting to fly CtC cargo back to home base.

So, having the ability to at least *save* a custom navigation route starting from point A and ending at point T would be a killer feature for those who typically run long routes. The benefit could be balanced by possible pirate theft of that trade route and, of course, that a ship takes the same path twice.

BTW, devs, the ability to do long-range custom navigation routes kicks some serious tail. Thx for being responsive to community requests.

i liked this idea and made another suggestion here:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/8805#101377

just a piggyback ;)