What if, instead of having your ship simply disappear if you log off while in open space, the AI takes over and pilots your ship to the nearest station? Might make things a bit more realistic.

I already suggested this, and if you are in say, 2 and you are blue your ship will fly to the wormhole regardless of the bots, oh and you can't login until your char is dead/docked

that's fine by me, I always logoff in a station so.

cheers

na cause they might as well just let you ship appear docked when you log back on.
used to be that way, you'd log off in space, log back on in a station in that sector.
sec 8 was tricky though

yeah,

I rememeber there was a nasty exploit with it.

"grmbls at the people who used it to avoid a dogfight"
/my eyes wander off to point at leathal :D

cheers

I'm all for it. But apparently the devs are against it. They stated something about future sectors being HUGE with a lot of exploration needed. They didn't want players to go back to a station when they've already spent minutes, or even hours, traveling in a vast sector. In other words going back and forth repeatedly would make it tedious.

We've also been made to understand by the devs that the process of transfering control from a player to the AI is a non-trivial one.

...nevertheless, this is exactly what we had planned to do. It's just not a simple thing to do right now.

oh oh a1k0n, could you make my normal blue's light ship into a lightning mine with engines?, I better not say that, then he will start pokeing around in my ship data, bad thing.
Suicidal lemming spots a1k0n pokeing around.
STOP!!!!
Few he didn't see it yet...

Just to make the post relevent,
The Ai should take control for like 1 minute and stay in the general postion flying around and shooting when shot upon, then it will disappear, be sure the bot is pretty smart, if it isn't many people will cry, mainly me.

That'd be cool if there was some kinda ghost icon or model (indestructable of course) of your ship (or just a simple beacon) in the general vicinity of where a player last logged off. I still don't like the idea of seeing a ship disappear into a thin air like that.

=/

How about we have the situation, as it is now (forced time logout) but the ship slowly fades away, as if from the VD Universe to RealLife(tm). Or maybe some cool green wormhole effect.

Same applies as the ship rejoins the game at the same location, like some transition between two parallel dimensions.

I prefer the idea of a worm hole opening up. 3 little men in green space suits pop out, driving a british racing green micro mini. Then....

"BLAM".

They zap it out of existance, using there ultra hot metal melting POTATOE MASHER!!! hahaha

WM

but... we'd be left exactly where we were again. because the aliens and aforementioned mini would then vanish into thin air (or intergalactic vaccum in this case).

The wormhole idea sounds cool. Kind of like how the devs jump into sector 0 out in the middle of nowhere. But maybe it could be a less intrusive or smaller wormhole effect than the regular ones.

In reading these archives, I think that this is a good idea.

it LIVES!!

*cackle*

seriously, what's with all the necromancy today? :P

Dunno, roguelazer is pissed at me for changing the [ITAN] forums, so he came back here and raised up a buncha dead threads?

I use this log-out exploit for ... [MMRFMRFFFfff....!]

Yeah, just make the ship come to a dead stop while you're logged out, and persist until someone or some bot comes along and kills it. Would that work?

Innocent until proven guilty:
I know people can abuse the log-out functionality, but I really think it should stay as-is for fighter craft. If someone's dial-up connection kicks them or if they legitimately have to stop playing on short notice, they should not be penalized in-game. I think the time-out rule is good enough. If anyone is hunting you and going to catch you, you are still dead anyway. Otherwise, I see no problem with it, and it has some bonus functionality as well... If there is a group of pirates, they could all log off in an ambush and be called back by 1 member out of game! :)

>If there is a group of pirates, they could all log off in an ambush and be called
>back by 1 member out of game! :)

umm.... how exactly is that a 'feature' rather than an exploit?

Remember, the Windows blue-screen-of-death is a feature, as is its stability (or complete lack thereof). An exploit is the use of any feature, intended or unintended, for any activity, wholy or in part, contrary to the EULA and/or Rules of Conduct etc.

In short, it's mincing words. ;)