[#944][v5.10] Autopilot active on relieving captain.

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Submarine
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[#944][v5.10] Autopilot active on relieving captain.

Post by Submarine » Sat, 12. Nov 22, 19:07

Time and time again, when I take over from a captain to pilot a ship the autopilot is active and prevents me piloting the ship.

Sometimes it does not appear to want to let go when I deactivate it!

Here is a screeny of the autopilot notification immediately on taking the seat just FYI.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2887735232
Last edited by Submarine on Sun, 13. Nov 22, 16:29, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [v5.10] Autopilot active on relieving captain.

Post by Alan Phipps » Sat, 12. Nov 22, 19:16

Yes, it happens frequently enough on arrival and assuming command - probably depending upon the receiving ship's prior orders/behaviours at the time. However, I have personally never known Shift-A to fail to successfully turn it off - unless the ship was already engaged in a critical order activity (eg docking, undocking, transfers, etc) and in which case you should not be able to assume control. Maybe that is what you are seeing.
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Re: [v5.10] Autopilot active on relieving captain.

Post by Submarine » Sat, 12. Nov 22, 19:35

You cant take control in those circumstances as the pilot refuses.

I dont know what happened in a recent occurrence, it was mid space piling through a bunch of asteroids and was too confused but I just had a situation where I apparently could not turn off travel drive for a while. Would not respond to space brake. That is rare but finding auto pilot on is not.

As far as bugs goes, the autopilot should absolutely be disabled on taking the chair. This is common and should never happen.
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Re: [v5.10] Autopilot active on relieving captain.

Post by Alan Phipps » Sun, 13. Nov 22, 00:16

Yes, I understand well what you describe as I have often sat in the chair and found the autopilot still on (and yes that might be considered a minor bug), but did Shift-A (or whatever you may have mapped the autopilot toggle to) not turn it off for you as a quick workaround in such cases? It has always worked for me.

As an amusing aside though, isn't having the autopilot on logically the best idea when changing over pilots? :D
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Re: [v5.10] Autopilot active on relieving captain.

Post by Submarine » Sun, 13. Nov 22, 11:47

The first time it happens is the worst.

My arguments from play experience would be no, auto-pilot is not helpful, certainly not in the middle of a firefight, since auto-pilot cannot handle combat (so why is it on?) and flying in a straight line is not a good idea when under attack.

Neither is sitting still but if you apply throttle and steer immediately after a double tap F to take the chair then you are immediately accelerating away from the bullet stream whereas if you have to take a few seconds more to realise auto-pilot is on, which is not consistent but somehow always happens when you least expect it and then switch autopilot off, (shift-A takes a few milliseconds extra) and then accelerate, you have possibly taken well over a shield's worth of damage from a charging P, so naturally you dont have any boost left either.

Chair handover would be best if consistent and expedient. The autopilot objective cannot be consistent so needs to default to off and switching it off takes time which is not expedient. Also this is another reason that taking the chair should require a single keypress.

Convincing?
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Re: [v5.10] Autopilot active on relieving captain.

Post by Alan Phipps » Sun, 13. Nov 22, 12:39

Yes, I do get the gameplay argument for such condition resets by default. :thumb_up:

What I am trying to confirm though is a more important potential game issue here where you said, "Sometimes it does not appear to want to let go when I deactivate it!" Could you please explain further about when you tried to manually deactivate the autopilot (however you have mapped the control) and it did not work?
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Re: [v5.10] Autopilot active on relieving captain.

Post by Submarine » Sun, 13. Nov 22, 16:25

Worries me too. That was the incident, one before the screenshot in the OP, which really prompted me to make this thread on the basis it was too much to cope with. I will have to observe and see if it happens again and see if I can track down the conditionality.

I dont have a save or anything, all I know is it seemed I was unable to bring the ship to a standstill by pressing space brake after taking the seat via double tap in the middle of an asteroid field. It was stuck in travel mode, though I could seem to steer it unless my steering happened to coincide with AP steering around roids but the AP does not normally steer in travel mode. It felt like it glitched half in and half out of AP for a few seconds and then I was able to stop it with space brake, which I have mapped to a button on my JS which has until now been completely reliable as it is a Virpil with good quality switches so I suspect it was working and the AP did not shut down smoothly.

Just saying that is what happened in case anyone else can corroborate or comment.
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Re: [v5.10] Autopilot active on relieving captain.

Post by Alan Phipps » Sun, 13. Nov 22, 17:00

We might be talking about different controls.

You refer to space brake which I think for me is Backspace by default, but I meant the autopilot toggle control which for me is Shift-A by default and then you should be able to brake.
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Re: [v5.10] Autopilot active on relieving captain.

Post by Submarine » Sun, 13. Nov 22, 17:23

You cannot use space brake (SB) i.e. halt all relative motion button when auto-pilot (AP) is active as it ignores you, likewise you also cannot steer when AP is active.

I found myself in a situation where I could steer but could not use SB and was stuck in travel mode with the spool up sound playing. It did not last long about 7 seconds. I tried toggling AP (which I have bound to shift A) several times during the 7s and could not seem to find a state where SB reduced velocity and cancelled the spool up sound.

For bug reporting purposes this has to be treated as anecdotal, unless I can replicate it. If its very very rare it is not a big problem. There is alternatively a possibility I got my key binds in a mullox and was panicking and gripping the stick in a way which activated travel drive or was leaning on the keyboard which caused a competing input or something, I dont know, will have to see if it happens again then pause and save and see what I am doing etc.

But the AP staying on when taking the seat is definitely replicable and I think that should be fixed.
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