Notice that my primary complaint is unrelated to combat. This suggestion would make it trivial to burn some cash in order to run multiple autonomous transport bots in parallel to massively accelerate resource transporting, turning manufacturing and trade into pay-to-win activities.

-1

Ok let’s cut to the chase here. The REAL reason this has been requested has zero to do with travel time. Implementing this would allow other players to pilot your ships via super simple plugin. This is the equivalent of letting someone else play your account which as I recall is against the rules of the game. This has been the common practice over the last several months by players using the recently nerfed RemotePilot plugin. Those are the facts and they are undisputed.

"The REAL reason this has been requested has zero to do with travel time."

Ascribing motivation without evidence? Not a constructive start to this comment. Even were that true, this would nevertheless benefit all players, and I would certainly appreciate this feature to make long distance travel easier. I'd definitely spend more time at Deneb if I could use this. There is already a great deal of worth provided by this idea described earlier in the thread.

"Implementing this would allow other players to pilot your ships via super simple plugin."

Cool. Plugins already greatly expand game capabilities. This is no different. Players can already issue commands to other players' ships that deal with a huge variety of functions. All of those functions are already provided by default in-game. This would be no different. What exactly is the problem here?

"This is the equivalent of letting someone else play your account which as I recall is against the rules of the game."

Oh. No, it's not. The EULA states "You may not transfer or share your Account with anyone." This, I suppose is what you are referencing. Your statement is a simple example of a false equivalency. The EULA is clearly referring to the sharing of login information. This is not the sharing of login information.

"This has been the common practice over the last several months by players using the recently nerfed RemotePilot plugin. Those are the facts and they are undisputed."

I dispute them, so, no.

Anything that resembles an auto pilot is a no.
VO is meant to be played in person as a skill game. It is not a game of stats or goodies. Getting access to the bulk of the goods is pathetically easy. The rest are rewards for hard work which would become meaningless if auto piloting were allowed.

-1

The +1s and - 1s were so predictable.

-1 to anything that makes building capships easier.

-1
This makes it way too easy for people to just build armies of auto piloted ships to do all their hauling for them. Fly your ship yourself.

So you are denying that players were remotely piloting other users capships for the purpose of hauling while said capship owner was in fact not at the controls?

Please limit your discussion to the suggestion at hand and not each other's motivations - real or imagined.

@rin

If the ability to load and unload transports was still an un-automatable activity your concern would be moot.

@wash

Taking my above point to rin into account, I'm sure you can see how an auto-pilot feature that only did basic navigation to/from sectors with no ability to load (i.e. via pitch or rotation changes) would mitigate concerns about "using someone else's account."

But this does get at the long requested idea of shared assets. The fact is account sharing has been going on forever and it's pretty hard to report if done in a way that doesn't arise suspicion (unlike Nyscersul's plugin). It's the natural inclination to seek out the path of least resistance, and I think in many cases it has led to longer retention than lowered revenue. Finding ways of enhancing guilds so that things like capitol ships and station storage can be shared, via GUI accessible controls and with appropriate limitations, can be a huge benefit to the game.

In the meantime, I really don't see the downside to letting someone automate travel between two sectors if their defense, their loading/unloading/docking is all un-automated.

I'm confused. Are you saying that we shouldn't be able to use plugins to buy and load cargo into a ship that's parked inside a station? Nothing anywhere in this thread until just now has implied that this feature would entail losing the ability to load cargo within a station via plugin, and if I have to choose between having the ability to manage cargo via plugin or having auto-pilot, I'm going to choose managing cargo.

Also, I have no idea what you're talking about regarding unloading. Nowhere in the scenario I painted was "unloading" a thing. The ship simply /explodes, leaving behind the cargo for the player to scoop and move by hand. You're saying that auto-pilot should disable both the ability for plugins to jettison cargo and the automatic dropped cargo on death?

@rin

I didn't really understand your post, as I thought it was applying to capships which obviously have very limited docking ability and /exploding doesn't help. I think such a feature would have more value to the game if it were exclusive to capital ships.

If it were also extended to trade vessels (atlas, taur, moth) I can see your concern, but only if it were an feature that had no requirements for access. I think it would make sense in the case of non-capitol ships for there to be some sort of trade level requirement to access a basic auto-pilot feature. If this was the case, your concern about pay to win would be mitigated because of the sheer amount of grind necessary to bring a fleet of ships up to the necessary XP level (or whatever requirement seems apt).

But, after a certain amount of grinding, I don't see any problem with someone doing exactly what you describe. It's not too different from the shop bots we have in place now.

And, regarding unloading -- no you are right, that should still be possible. But loading up someone else's ship should be impossible without manual control of the receiving ship's account (i.e. with FCP or SSS or whatever). Loading from within a station is obviously always possible.

The cargo comments are irrelevant - it is perfectly acceptable for the loading and unloading of cargo to be automated, as the docking sequence both from the ship to the station, or the ship to a capital ship, would need to be done manually.

In regards to the skill required, it is described as being inclined to immediately stop if combat is detected - requiring supervision, and no afk useage.

In regards to the multiple acccount useage, i shall discuss two players situations.

Pandoram currently owns six capital ships on three characters (i think)- i am unsure exactly of the arrangement but he could have those three capships flying together, with a simple behaviour, however, if combat begins nearby, then he would suddenly be stuck having to manually pilot all three to safety. And why not afford him this option? Completing that many capital ships is an incredible achievement.

Wash uses many different characters, mostly as spotters, but also a large number of actually controlled alts, he also uses many gunner characters. In wash's case, the only characters he could do the autopilot with would be those able to use decent ships. He would end up being able to potentially fly lets say five behemoths arpund the universe... But again, if combat is encountered those moths would end up stopping dead, and almost certainly end up destroyed.

I do not intend to show judgementof either of these people's useages of multiple characters, iam simply using their activities as examples, i myself have experimented with multiple gunners on my trident, and similar.

The reality is that by allowing the autopilot with these specific limitations would enable these pilots to fly multiple ships, but with each additional ship the risk increases greatly... Its like spinning plates only whilst being shot at.

Are we really to shoot down any good idea because of the potential for exploitation?

I simply want a method which is effectively a version of cruise control, something which would not be expected to think - in case of doubt, it disengages.

The limitations of the ships considered could be used - if the costof the autopilot is enough to be more than the potential profits of the highest load each ship cojld carry, the potential losses would become extortionate.

When untanked, and at max profit, a behemoth could make 1 mill profit in a single trip, so the cost of 1 mill for its autopilot then would extend the cost of a fully laden moth being lost to around 2.2 mill. Thats enough to replace and outfit a trident.

In the case of a trident, maybe a higher cost again would be appropriate, the maximum profit for a tridents cargo load would be around 3.5 mill, so if the piloting software cost 3.5 mill for a trident, then the total value of the losses of a full trading trident and equipment could easily exceed 5mill - assuming no load - and maybe 12millif full.

There has been much ingame enjoyment of things like escort missions - attacking the escorts rather than actually completing the mission...

What would happen for all those combative type pilots if suddenly there were lots of escort equivalent behaviour being active? It would mean the universe gets more combat - imagine the increased satisfaction of that escorting trident not being an ai, but beloging to a player? The satisfaction of the kill would be much higher.

And, thats all assuming someone goes afk - this discussion of easy kills is specifically placed to illustrate that the risk associated with its use is too high to consider using it whilst afk.

If there are issues with players using multiple characters at once, then thats a different topic - however with relation to this topic, using multiple characters would increase the risk extensively.

Also, greenwall's comment about licenses is a great one - something i hadnt thought of. A very high license requirement would be appropriate alongside the costs, and at least lvl 10, maybe higher. My current trade level is 14 i think, and i would be happy to need to up it a level or two more to enable access. Maybe 15 would be the highest sensible level - the increased requirements beyong 15 in experience mean that a large portion of players havent reached level 15 even as in my case after 5 years of play.

And to enable the mechanic of a trade level limit, you could create the autopilot as being a utility lport equipable item, which only allows useage on certain ships, meaning the autopilot's cost could be signified in the purchase price of the item (of course, in this case a variable price would not be possible, so i suggest that the highest end of the spectrum be used, say a 3mill lport item - 3mill items on a moth would be heavily risky.) Alternately, it could be linked into some other past suggestions that suggested a new port type with the use of adding ship enhancements, say a turbo booster for more thrust, or armour plating for more hp.

Also, it could be a mission requirement as well, altho i think the missions would require some careful planning to be very hard, but not impossible to complete.

Oh, and i would like to thank wash specifically for offering sensible comments. I understand your feelings are strong, and looking past them to offer constructive comments is much appreciated.

Same goes for all those offering sense, whether negative or positive.

Also, i apologise for the length of my posts... The term "Garrulous" comes to mind.

-1 still. None of this ADDS anything to the game. In fact, it seems to make things much more complicated than they need to be. How about you tell me why this is needed for VO as a whole. What's the primary benefit? Because right now you are hitting us with walls of text where you keep repeating yourself.

You keep telling people that their comments are "irrelevant", and unfortunately that makes those of us who don't like the idea to start with, even more skeptical of your intentions with this suggestion. You still have not explained why combot being detected would auto kill auto pilot. My suggestion if you want to this to gain any traction:

Make an outline of the suggestion. The walls of text are counter productive.

"Are we really to shoot down any good idea because of the potential for exploitation?"

I really don't think this needs to be answered but as you asked as if there was some doubt, YES

I did make an outline. But here goes...

An autopilot capable of following a navroute, unable to dock at the end.
One also able to approach a targetted object, and stop within a shortdistance.

Limited by the large cost of the software, and the small selection of ships it could work on, most specifically capital ships. Also, that would automatically disengage if an enemy gets within a sensible proximity range, to avoid any combat potential.

By large costs, i suggest 3 million for a capital ship, and 1 mill for a small ship.

And, to refer to the part where you fault my saying its irrelevant... It is irrelevant - if you can auto load a ship, but you cant auto dock it, you still need to dock it manually.

To explain how i feelthis would add to the game, I feel that having this would encourage more travel, and less sitting in one place waiting for combat to come to you, say latos h2, sedina b8, and so on. It could also mitigate people's desires to leave a character in certain systems so theydont have to fly there - they could fly there far more easily.

That right there is about the game play style of specific players. It is a personal choice stay in one location. Pilots I fly with search the galaxy for targets. Some pilots are go getters and will seek out combat, others want it to come to them (arena style) . Auto pilot will not change this.





I don't think it takes more than 30 minutes to get anywhere in the galaxy. Though some places should not be "easy" to get to.

Look, your suggestion might make sense if VO's galaxy was as large as Elite Dangerous or NMS or similar. But this is a small galaxy. If VO grows in size to 100's of systems, then maybe your suggestion will have merit. Until then, it is not needed.

+1 if we can autopilot on android too like pc :p

Haven’t the stated their intentions to release an overhaul of the universe map, like, soon? This year? If it isn’t relevant now it will be eventually.