Will somebody please fix the Auto-Pillok !!!!

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Kitch
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Post by Kitch » Thu, 19. Jan 06, 16:36

AHA!

The mystery and the antipodean apricot autopillok assault may now be explained...

I was wondering as I have very few issues with crashing into things, though I heartily agree it could be better.

Still hit things occasionally though, which should easily be avoided. Hitting a million ton rock just isn't on and deserves to have gerbils in front of tribunals quick sharp.

alphalvr
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Post by alphalvr » Thu, 19. Jan 06, 16:55

apricotslice wrote:
RJV wrote:Navigating through sectors I've also not had a problem. While trading in my Mercury on arrival in a sector I boost speed to max, set the target, press U then J. I've never hit anything, asteroid, station, nada. Even in Seizewell.

Admittedly not used capships though.
Thats pretty well what I do, and its crashing me into asteroids every time theres one in the way.

Now interesting comment though, cap ships. I'm flying a Centaur, which has the speed of M5.

Makes me wonder if the auot-pillok is not using the top speed showing for the ship, but the top speed stored for the model itself. Thus it changes course way too late, because the ship is not where it thinks it is.
i never use autopilot ever but cuz i see your moaning posts everywhere :P i thought id have a go.

test 1
sat ship next to asteroid and set a target directly behind it. whee, succesfully docked...no problems there.

test 2
went to that sector next to paranid prime (with lotsa roids) sat as far away as i could from a station and put my ship in amonst the tinys roids. 6km of roids to circumnavigate....click....wheeeee....successfully docked

seems ok to me, back to flying myself

mind you it wud be nice if when i jump in my elephant, all the traders that were heading for that gate i jumped to, didnt suddenly explode all over my ship :o

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apricotslice
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Post by apricotslice » Fri, 20. Jan 06, 02:15

I think one of the difinitive tests of auto-pilot goes like this :

Choose the fastest freighter you have and tell it to jump to Orebelt and dock with the pirate base. Then tell a fighter of each class, with maxed speed, to protect it, ensuring they can jump with it. (If they cant jump have them waiting at the north gate in orebelt and then tell them). Then also get a Mammoth to follow the freighter as well.

If you can get the lot to the pirate base without losing any, then theres nothing wrong with your auto-pilot.

In my game, I cant even get a merc to dock at the pirate base on its own. I sat there and watched it one day. 2 major hits on asteroids and it was left with just orange peel slice of hull left, at which point I jumped it out. It was nowhere near the pirate base when I jumped it either, so had no hope of getting there.

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ttl
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Post by ttl » Fri, 20. Jan 06, 02:59

I think the autopilot does OK with just one ship and stationary obstacles like asteroids. Sometimes it has problems with more complicated "obstacles" like stations.. Like a vivid memory I have off my wingman Nova getting into the "creaks" of a teladi trading station it was trying to dock onto, and promptly splattering itself all over the station hull.

The main problem comes with formations of ships. Way too often the autopilot, or a wingman, gets totalled in a formation as one ship of the formation (usually the lead ship) evades an asteroid. Another ship then makes a sharp turn to avoid the first one, and of course doesn't see that he's making his evasive maneuver right into the very asteroid the first guy was swerving to avoid.

Changing the speeds of ships might also wreak havoc with autopilot. Maybe some of you guys have the Blackrain rebalance running? Or maybe somebody can confirm wheter tha autopilot uses the actual ship stats to determine its maeuvers vs. being hard-coded by ship type (or smth)?

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apricotslice
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Post by apricotslice » Fri, 20. Jan 06, 03:05

My guess is there is an inaccurate hardcoding causing the problem. Programmers gut think.

joquarky
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Post by joquarky » Sat, 21. Jan 06, 08:48

I noticed something else that's happening more often as i get more comfortable with the user interface...

If I gate into a sector, select my destination and turn on autopilot, my ship likes to dart off in some random direction, and then corrects itself shortly thereafter to head towards my target.

On a rare occasion, it even turns 90 degrees and flys stright into the inside of the gate ring, doing damage to my shields/hull.

The severity of the turn seems to correspond with how quickly I select a destination and enable auto-pilot.

What's up with that?

I'm guessing that once I exit the gate, it suddenly goes into "object avoidance" mode sometimes. Which is funny since on those rare occasions it actually does the opposite.

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apricotslice
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Post by apricotslice » Sat, 21. Jan 06, 11:48

Never, ever, turn on the auto-pilot while just emerged from the gate. Splat !

Especially when jumping in. Always make sure you put in some distance first.

New Info on the problem :

Today I watched 2 of my freighters, having been given nav orders, both launched themselves into the dock, scraped around against the other docked ships and then power off. I'd guess about 20mj of shield damage in the process. I thought the first was incredable, and then a few minutes later, the 2nd did it as well.

So a lot of our ships are being destroyed AS THEY LEAVE the stations, not as they dock.

Its the same bug where your own ship leaps to full speed as you undock, which happens to me about 50% of the time, and kills me semi regularly when I'm not paying attention.

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Post by strat » Sat, 21. Jan 06, 16:35

Glad I found this thread as the auto pilot has been an annoying feature of this game for far to long. I was about to open a thread myself because I think I just came across the last straw, so to speak.
My wingmen (three others, 1Xm5 and 2Xm4) and I where happily heading towards the east gate. I head on through and upon entering the system I excelerate to maximum velocity and target a wing of 4 pirates 7km away.
I'm in my Nova so I know my wingmen will have no problem catching me and we make very short work of the pirates, however my disco did'nt make it. Or so I thought, after clearing out the remainder of the system in my patrol I head on back through the same gate I came in and proceeded to head for the north gate. Untill I noticed a lone green m5 on the bottom of the screen, I hit the system map and there is my m5 at the east gate so I reduce speed and order my wing to protect me and hit seti.
Nothing, the ship is still beside the east gate so when I get over there I'm in a bit of shock because my m5 appears to be locked in an endless manoeuvre and avoidance loop with the back side of the gate. It must have been like this for nearly half an hour.
I managed to free it by moving to the otherside and repeating the order.
Last straw I tell thee. Sort it out Egosoft.

Anyone still reading this.


Strat...
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Well in theory at least.

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alphalvr
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Post by alphalvr » Sat, 21. Jan 06, 16:50

apricotslice wrote:I think one of the difinitive tests of auto-pilot goes like this :

Choose the fastest freighter you have and tell it to jump to Orebelt and dock with the pirate base. Then tell a fighter of each class, with maxed speed, to protect it, ensuring they can jump with it. (If they cant jump have them waiting at the north gate in orebelt and then tell them). Then also get a Mammoth to follow the freighter as well.

If you can get the lot to the pirate base without losing any, then theres nothing wrong with your auto-pilot.

In my game, I cant even get a merc to dock at the pirate base on its own. I sat there and watched it one day. 2 major hits on asteroids and it was left with just orange peel slice of hull left, at which point I jumped it out. It was nowhere near the pirate base when I jumped it either, so had no hope of getting there.
well i guess as i like ore belt so much ive set up 1/2 my facts and what not in there id say that was pretty definitive, and when i jump in in my elephant then switch to a buzzard i always tell the elephant to follow me.

the only ships i lost in ore belt so far are ones pirates took a shine to when i was oos

i dint mind losing ships, i just want to know when i lost one....im sick of looking at messages to find i lost ships all over galaxy with no warning at all.

mind you, ive learned to live with it

Britguy21
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Post by Britguy21 » Sat, 21. Jan 06, 18:10

Can someone from egosoft comment on the disasterous AP in the game. I`ve lost the so many frieghters in the game through the idiotic AP.

Please get it fixed. I think that it should be a top priority for the next patch. Come on DEVS?

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Scripting as a solution or Pay the pilots more

Post by zergfest90 » Sat, 21. Jan 06, 19:05

So far, I've been lucky. I've only suffered some minor hull damage from my ships crashing into station. When I achieve that pinnacle of success where I have sufficient ships that the odds start stacking against me and one of my ships inevitably crashes to its death against an object, I had planned on just using scripting to replace the ship.

But is that really reasonable? I think not. Nay, the problem is not an accident. Rather it is that the pilots that we are getting for FREE just cannot fly very straight. If we want our pilots to avoid the occasional obstacle like the odd Mount Everest sized obstacle in their path that has been there for a gazillion years, then we must realize that we are now obligated to PAY them.

:)

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apricotslice
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Post by apricotslice » Sun, 22. Jan 06, 03:50

Last time I was in my home sector, and I try not to go there now, I had a message "Your Buster was destroyed by asteroid". wtf ? I have a squadron of m3/m4s protecting the leader about 10km above my hub, and 15 kms from the nearest asteroid.

There was no way in the world that it hit an asteroid !

It may have hit one of the M3's, but if so, why does the message say it was destroyed by an asteroid ?

I save nearly 5 minutely now, and when in sector, almost every 2 minutes. I have no intention of losing ships, and I reload every time I do.

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apricotslice
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Post by apricotslice » Thu, 26. Jan 06, 07:51

So....I seen a few times in here how people are beating the Xenon in their own sectors by letting the ship pilot itself and turning seta on.

So I was meandering past Xenon 101 just now, and thought, what the hell, why not give it a try and see what happens.

I so I gated in, gunned my trusty Centaur up while I turned on the attack all targets command. Then turned on seta.

The ship went berzerk ! It was everywhere and nowhere, it didnt take a hit from anything, it did very short bursts into targets and moved on to the next. All at high speed, and in true roller coaster motion.

Nothing at all could touch it.

And then you guessed it.........

It went splat straight into the exact center of the biggest roid in the entire sector !!!!!

I figured that was a good hint to check mail again. :)

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Warden
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Post by Warden » Thu, 26. Jan 06, 09:28

Perhaps your gerbil just doesn't like being stuck in a tin can flying around in space and simply yearns to feel dirt and rocks under his feet again, thus the closest he can find to this are asteroids. :D
Q:What turned the Terraformers into the Xenon

A:Microsoft Windows 2115 update

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apricotslice
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Post by apricotslice » Fri, 27. Jan 06, 03:20

I did a test for someone yesterday. Took 2 falcons and 2 busters set to protect me, on a 10 sector run, stopping at stations twice, one a mine, doing random course changes. No incidents. These were normal uprades and we did 127 the whole way, on 10x seta.

Took on a Khaak cluster, decided to see how effective the 4 would be, and got my arse handed to me on a platter. M6 zip, Khaak 1, 4 ex-pirates just happily flying around doing nothing much. Their gerbels could obviously see, but I guess they were enjoying the view too much to bother actually fighting.

For anyone reading, this was in 1.3 version, having installed and uninstalled the 1.3.1beta patch twice.

Dr.Donkeys
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Post by Dr.Donkeys » Tue, 14. Feb 06, 07:51

Nanook wrote:As a point of reference, modern aircraft autopilots are not trusted to do much more than maintain level flight at a set speed. All maneuvering is done manually by the pilot, or at least under some sort of pilot control. I certainly wouldn't feel safe having a piece of software fly me through the maze of aircraft that can be found over a busy modern airport!
Then it might scare you when I tell you that you are totally wrong. Many thousands of modern aircraft, (at least I can guarantee all Airbus aircraft) make thousands of 100% automated flights from takeoff to landing each day. Part of the rise in airline safety after the 1970s has been widely attributed to the removal of the possibility of human error in judgement.

Just like in X3, pilots are there to take control in case of an emergency. The difference is that X3 autopilot is untrustworthy.

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apricotslice
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Post by apricotslice » Mon, 20. Mar 06, 12:50

Time to refresh the call for help.

Will someone please fix the Auto-Pillok !!!

I thought I had the answer. I modded a Centaur to take 1gj sheilds. If 3 of them dont protect you against hitting an asteroid, then nothing will other than 10gj.

So I bought a new centaur, upgraded its shields, guns and fittings.

Sent it to my main complex for e-cells.

I happened to be in sector, as I was also trying to see if you can join an EQ dock to a complex and the effects (it wouldnt join).

Suddenly, my complex hub is missing half its sheilding and you guessed it, around 20 million worth of M6 is space dust !

To add insult to injury, I get notified I lost race rank and dropped a whole Argon ranking.

Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please

Fix the Auto-pillok.

If an M6 with 3gj shielding is not safe, then nothing is.

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Post by tikanderoga » Mon, 20. Mar 06, 14:44

joquarky wrote:I'm guessing that once I exit the gate, it suddenly goes into "object avoidance" mode sometimes. Which is funny since on those rare occasions it actually does the opposite.
That's verry funny, especially if you're flying some bulky thing like an Orca and you "wipe" off everything getting in or out of the gate.. that thing deffinitely needs a windscreen wiper..
If you got a monopoly on an operating system, and you make tons of money by supporting it, why fix it?

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apricotslice
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Post by apricotslice » Mon, 20. Mar 06, 15:06

I've posted a tech support thread on this issue.

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=1560342

If anyone can add some useful information to the conditions that exist at the time of destruction, please post it there.

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esd
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Post by esd » Mon, 20. Mar 06, 15:16

Please don't bring up old threads, especially as you've already posted another on the subject.
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