Facilities for autopilotless flying; 180 degree turn, timed burn

[damerell]

I have been doing some autopilotless flying, and there are two things I would appreciate. One is a facility to turn the ship through exactly 180 degrees, "stem to stern". The second is a facility for using a specified thruster for a specified amount of time (and optionally ending time acceleration when the "timed burn" is complete).

[Brianetta]

Sounds like an autopilot to me. (-: Another thing that has been wished for is pro- and retrograde vehicle orientation. All aids of this nature are, fundamentally, an autopilot function, as is Set Speed mode of course. Set Speed could, in future, require that the player own an autopilot.

[damerell]

I disagree (surprise!).

From a gameplay POV, turning the ship 180 and doing a timed burn are otherwise possible, but pointlessly fiddly; if you want to encourage people to try and go it without the autopilot, why make it needlessly awkward?

Conceptually, the autopilot takes the ship to places in the universe. I think (if you must make Set Speed an autopilot function) the division should be between functions which require knowledge of the star system the ship is in - including fancy orbital mechanics - and functions which are purely internal to the ship.

[Brianetta]

Anything that fires thrusters, and isn't you, is an autopilot.

[Brianetta]

Expanding on that, there won't necessarily only be one autopilot for sale. A basic one might be able to turn your ship 180°, or fix your orientation to your trajectory for correct tangent burns. A more advanced one might be able to handle the (really quite complex) task of maintaining a constant velocity relative to a gravitational body ("Set Speed" mode). The most advanced one will be able to fly you to a specified destination, all by itself.

[damerell]

This might work better with sub-tonne masses, which I understand is an outstanding issue, so that there is a tempting weight saving by downgrading as well as a cash saving.

In this three-tier system, perhaps the first tier autopilot might also be able to fire thrusters to counteract gravity and turn the ship such that the nearest gravitational body is positioned either directly underneath or directly aft? These are not as complex as "Set Speed", but would make the first tier system genuinely valuable for planetary landings.

[s20dan]

This is similar to #450

[CmdrBugbear]

Related to this, what about the idea of a 'sticky keys' for the various thrust directions? Say Shift-I switches forward thruster on, hitting Shift-I again switches it off.

[Brianetta]

I'm not sure that I would find this useful. Did you have a particular case in mind?

[s20dan]

I can think of a case, you want to accelerate in an arbitrary direction but don't want to hold the button down :) I just use a bit of card jammed into a key, its quicker than coding it up hehe

[Brianetta]

I accelerate time.

[Web-eWorks]

Closing as unimplemented; feature requests and discussion should go on the forum, as we use Github for tracking actively-developed features and issues with currently-implemented functionality.