I want a "match target speed" button/function.
GREAT for showing newbies the ropes, staying in the convoy and not overtaking the ship you are escorting.

It should keep matching it (or trying to if it's faster than you) for as long as it is targeted or until you manually adjust speed.

Shouldn't be hard to implemet either.

It would be nice, although if it kept matching speed your ship would essentially be mimicking the actions of the targeted ship only farther away. So it you line up it will be useful and would basically automatically follow the target (great for convoys). But if you didn't line up it would simply look like some wierd synchronized swimming in space. Which would be cool, but relatively useless.

The problem is with physics mode. If someone is going -10m/s away from you, do you go 10m/s or -10m/s?

I assumed "match speed" would just make your velocity vector identical to the targetted ship's velocity vector.

you'd go -10m/s if the other guy is backing up, 10m/s if the player is going forward.

It wouldn't be mimicing moves unless the player you're "speedlocked" with never moves his/her mouse or rotates.
Only thrusters match. (forward, backward, left, right, up and down)

why not let it mimick moves? aren't the ship's movements calculated through vectors? then, your ship would try to acquire the same movement vector as your target (i.e. velocity, direction and orientation).
the only problem i see is: the continuous stream of info (back and forth) required would probably lag the server if too many ppl would use it at the same time.

so maybe it should be limited to velocity, but then it'd require something like th booster side-effect, because each time you'd move your mouse (even by accident), it'd drop out of the matching mode.
or, you could limit the amount of updates per second. don't make it in intervals of .05s (which is below the threshold at which the human eye can perceive changes), but instead 1, 2, many seconds.

Except then we'd have people that would just leave their ships on autopilot. Trader A starts trading, then 800m behind him, player B trades on autopilot. :p

I'm imagining a train of 70 Marauders following each other.

I'm imagining an inani hacking into the autopilot and having them all fly into his rockets. :D

well to solve that both party's involved would have to agree on the convoy so that way you don't have the whole univers gaining tons of money at once at one persons expense.

I just like a simple match speed (absolute speed, just + or - whatever m/s), no direction change.

So if someone was backign away from you, you would back away from them?

It doesn't matter what someone is doing relative to you, it only matters what they're doing. If they're going -10m/s, then you go -10m/s. Now, if they're in physics and you're not, you won't go backwards, but you'll go forwards.

so if someone strafes right at 10m/s do you go forwards or back? If you're going to make it just a speed match it shouldn't have a - and +. Just go their speed forwards, or match their velocity (ie speed and direction). I agree with this mostly because of turbo. In a fight where someone's turboing away you should be able to match your turbo to theirs. Maybe this could be implemented seperately from a speed match by putting back +turbo 1-1000, but where each setting has a different max speed... but all of them have the same energy drain.

ok ok ok, I'll make myself more clear
If you're in arcade, you will go forwards no matter what at their speed, even if the target is going backwards-left-down at 25m/s, you'll go 25m/s forward.
If you're in physics, then you match their velocity, so if the target is going backwards-left-down you'll go backwards-left-down (from your position you were in when you ran the match speed command).

Match speed would be really easy to implement. What it would do, basically, is force arcade mode on and set the controller equal to the target ship, not your mouse/keyboard/joystick. However, if the target turobs, then it won't work anymore unless your ship is also matching heading. To do that, we could override mouse control to the target ship. It would be interesting for convoys.

Match speed (without matching heading) as a temporary function might also be useful for combat.

So... Can you put it in 3.3.4? :D

match speed without heading is all we're asking. :)

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned a relatively old game called Freespace. Target a ship, match its speed, and your engine throughput becomes as close as possible to theirs. That worked well because there wasn't anything of a physics mode. It was basically dogfighting jet-style. The presence of a physics-thruster mode throws a kink in that, and makes it less practical to implement this.