Having to micromanage short trips between station and asteroids while grinding feels a bit silly. I realize that having a course automatically programmed to an object is at least as silly if not more so, but I do think that being able to set a time in seconds for a sustained burst of throttle *or* turbo would be reasonable. I *think* this would not allow for automation scripts; moreover, any use of this facility would require careful calculation based on current ship capabilities and weight, so thought and skill would still be required to use such a feature. Furthermore, this feature would only be as safe as the area the pilot is working in; trying to go too far AFK in a sector with bots or pirates would necessarily incur some amount of risk.

If this is still considered distasteful insofar as it might encourage excessive AFK play, a similar feature would be the ability to discharge battery power by (or down to) a certain quantity before issuing a /+turbo 1 (iirc), which would allow the same sort of estimated travel distance but with the additional penalty of ending with a brief window of 0 energy if the turbo is not interrupted before power runs out.

Is any of this already possible? I don't know what terms to search for, so all I could really do was browse back a few pages in the forums. If this has already been ruled out, is there a better way to make short-range travel feel more "elegant", for lack of a better word?

EDIT: I should have mentioned that the only comparable suggestion I have found in the sticky is "autopilot", but this is just meant as a request for one of many small changes that would together comprise an autopilot system. I still don't see this particular mechanic in autopilot discussions, though I will check a few more. If it clarifies anything, the only portion of a trip I want to be able to automate is the part where I would normally have the Nav screen up so I can properly alt-tab and hence can't see the asteroid hurtling toward me. All I want to automate is watching the Distance: field, and even then only by guessing the necessary total thrust to travel that distance.

EDIT 2: I think this is actually a reasonably close match for the "Request for Comments: Changing how throttle and turbo work." thread in the RFC sticky. In fact, I think this feature would be one way to allow people to experiment with their own modifications to the throttle/turbo system. I'll look a bit more around that thread too.

EDIT 3: Based on what I found, a variable turbo and lock (perhaps set by the current throttle level at time of activation) also comes to mind as an equivalent solution. However, this gets into a topic which apparently has historically achieved little more than massive spontaneous outpourings of emotional anguish, so I'll just let the thought die quietly at this point if it doesn't catch on in a constructive manner.

Turbo lock. Learn it, use it, love it.

Aside from that, STFU and fly your Goddamn ship.

Perhaps I misunderstood then. What I've been able to find is that /+turbo 1 is turbo lock, no more and no less. I have measured a minimum total range of 7000 meters using this, which is a bit beyond the scope of most of the sectors I've explored so far. Is there more to turbo lock than this?

Nope. Turbo lock just locks your turbo so you don't have to hold it down.

"a similar feature would be the ability to discharge battery power by (or down to) a certain quantity before issuing a /+turbo 1"

That is more or less doable. Just carry one energy weapon and use it to drain your powercell to the level you want it at before engaging turbo lock. Of course, you give up one weapon port that could have had a mining beam.

You would of course have to use a ship+powercell combination that does not allow infinite turbo.

If you're getting that bored "grinding" then you're doing it wrong. :)

I suppose you could write a simple plugin that would stop you before you crashed into or passed your target then turned on your mining beams. Then when you jump in-sector you can just point at a rock, hit a button, then go get a snack.

Why hit a button to mine? This mining bot should be totally automated, so it simply keeps mining 24x7 ...
Next, a trade bot?

Hmmm... better leave those autoplay funtions to Eve...

But going entirely OT... those auto-(mine,trade,pilot) bots would at least populate universe... just imagine having a default auto-mode for your ship, everybody have and can dock, engage it and go away... his ship departs in autopilot mode, the player logs off... lots of traffic and targets :)

Along with asteroid databases that include targeting options and something to determine distance, you could automate flying around a sector to different asteroids with only turbo, pitch, roll, and brakes, which eliminate combat purposes. If you can find a reliable way to target the station dock (I've targetted station parts before, but can't do it consistantly) you might dock as well. Of course, this would be completely automated and not what you're looking for, nor something likely to be implimented, don't know for sure though.

You could find a better way to grind. Get a rag, mine a thousand or so cus of ore while doing whatever with VO minimized, pick it up with a behemoth later. Ore does not time out when a player is within the sector.

Dunno if this is the same guy I was talking to last night, but I'll put this here as well:

If you mine as tarenty describes, the ore still counts toward your badges. You just have to come back with a cargo ship to carry it back to the station for selling.

You do not have to carry it with the same ship you used to mine it.

I'm mining to get the behemoth, off and on, but the problem is not that there is something displeasurable about the exercise per se, just that I can imagine a "cooler" way of approaching it. I'm not advocating any AI at all, at least beyond simple user-initiated (not scheduled or delayed) commands. The weapon discharge idea is a very good one, I am just noobishly terrified to fire anywhere near a station.

At any rate, there's nothing keeping me from mining while multitasking as it is (well, aside from the fact that I can't drag the mouse outside the window without the PDA screen up, a cosmetic difficulty at worst). It's just that I can picture ways that the existing game mechanics, with a small number of tiny tweaks, could be remapped on a voluntary basis to let people customize the mundane travel experience, perhaps at the expense of extra overall wall time spent in such travel. The more I think about it the more I think this boils down to a request for adjustible turbo lock, but I had that wrong in my head the whole time anyway (if it drew variable power then it wouldn't help with short self-stopping trajectories, and if it drew fixed power then it would have very little justification for being, outside of this one tiny application); besides, this feature has been discussed before and the topic never caught on from what I could find. I'll post back if I think of anything more useful.

Thanks for the tips, though; this will help rethink some habits and strategies either way.

Next time you are AFK mining, just let me know where your at, and I promise it will be less dull. :)

"Next time you are AFK mining, just let me know where your at, and I promise it will be less dull. :)"

Cute, but (a) for the nth time I'm not afk, I just have another window open next to VO, (b) I don't find mining dull, it just feels like I'm doing so in a 30-year-old hatchback instead of a futuristic space ship, (c) I tend to mine close to the NFZ around my faction's capital stations, and (d) even if I was able to slow down my mining rhythm (that is what I want to do in a nutshell!) I have *already said* that I accept a greater vulnerability to pirates (anything else would be in blatant defiance of elementary statistics).

Oh, and (e) my limited experience in this game leads me to be less than a little bit scared of pirates. What are you going to do? Steal 34cu of silicate ore? Make me buy another Atlas? No offense, but this puts you at the same threat level as a spinning asteroid, which can do the same with less braggadocio.

I have already retracted my suggestion until/unless I can come up with a useful way to implement it, and I still appreciate the constructive comments (thanks again for those). I'll continue to defend the basic idea as having been honestly well-intended and possibly being salvageable, but otherwise there is no need to talk me out of something I've already talked myself out of to begin with, though I admit hyperbole and empty threats can be fun sometimes.

aside from the fact that I can't drag the mouse outside the window without the PDA screen up, a cosmetic difficulty at worst

Press 't' to talk. Free mouse! Less intrusive.

Hahaha, you summed up VO's current 'pirate' populations perfectly. :P

Actually, he summed up the pointless FPS nature of all of VO perfectly: nothing you can do in game matters to anyone else playing, ever. Which is why the older "pirates" tend to have moved on.

"Press 't' to talk. Free mouse! Less intrusive."

Awesome. I had not thought of this, but it works perfectly! Being able to see the asteroid in front of me will help a great deal. Thanks!

"nothing you can do in game matters to anyone else playing, ever."

I can see that, though at the same time (at least way back when) I've had pirates and vigilantes very effectively block me from doing business and completing missions close to their respective factions' systems. Maybe those were typical of the 'older "pirates"' you mentioned. If truly valuable cargo becomes a big part of the game, or even if ships become a commonly trafficked commodity (as I understand it, you can presently stockpile rare ships but can't trade them) this might change, though I am very glad of the fact that the only motivation pirates would have to interrupt silicate mining would be pure spite with no promise of actual profit. If simple transports or basic ores ever became too precious to lose, it would be much harder to get into the game.

I still suspect that if collecting resources was a "smoother" experience -- i.e., if one spent days or weeks earning whatever you've bought and are now risking in travel, but truly enjoyed the time spent and would gladly do it again -- then random player encounters could be more profitable for seasoned veterans without being frustrating to those of us who are taking our time in learning the subtleties of the game. However, I've got a number of other ways to tweak my user experience now, so I'll work with those for a while before trying again to cook up a harebrained suggestion that doesn't even work in theory. :\