Request: Let player give themselves orders

[Falcrack]

I know we can give orders to our NPC pilots, such as making trade reservations, attacking certain ships, patrolling an area, etc.

What I would like is the ability to give myself such orders. In effect, giving myself an order would act like a mission, with yellow guidance markers. For instance, I could give myself a couple orders, one to buy certain goods at a station for a locked in price, another to sell at a different station for a locked in price. It would make it a lot easier to play as a space trucker, personally making trade runs, rather than just relying on my NPC captains.

In addition, when I sit down at the controls of one of my ships that already had orders, then the set of orders it had could turn into a mission for me. It would not be a mandatory mission, and I could always ignore it, cancel it, or switch to a different mission.

If the ship I am assuming command of is a subordinate (like for instance a freighter assigned to trade for a station), the station manager could assign me trade missions (eg buy 300 hull parts at your factory, then sell those 300 hull parts to the shipyard), which I could then personally help fulfill if I wish, by following yellow guidance markers.

I don't understand why it is not possible to give the ship I am directly controlling an order. Giving myself an order would make it so that the mission guidance system is available to assist me in fulfilling that order.

[vvvvvvvv]

What I would like is the ability to give myself such orders. In effect, giving myself an order would act like a mission, with yellow guidance markers. For instance, I could give myself a couple orders, one to buy certain goods at a station for a locked in price, another to sell at a different station for a locked in price.

That is called shopping list, and not orders.

Implemented in factorio and No Man's Sky, to an extent. You can pin recipe you want to build and have missing components listed on screen.

[Falcrack]

What I would like is the ability to give myself such orders. In effect, giving myself an order would act like a mission, with yellow guidance markers. For instance, I could give myself a couple orders, one to buy certain goods at a station for a locked in price, another to sell at a different station for a locked in price.

That is called shopping list, and not orders.

Implemented in factorio and No Man's Sky, to an extent. You can pin recipe you want to build and have missing components listed on screen.

Perhaps I shaould clarify, instead of giving myself orders (which implies something mandatory), I would be giving myself a mission. A mission which gives direction markers on where to go and what to do to complete it.

It's like if I were Jeff Bezos, but every once in a while I want to hop in an Amazon delivery truck and make regular deliveries, with the GPS giving me directions on where to go and drop off the goods.

[Agrefits]

I actually love that idea.

It would allow you to "plan" your sorties, trading runs etc. ahead so you do not have to open the map every minute to set yourself a new "Guidance" after completing a single "task" or arriving at a single point in the universe.. thats the one thing i actually dislike about the game, sometimes killing the immersion by constant "Map Hopping"

If you can set yourself waypoints, trades, attack orders in advance the game would handle a lot differently.

Imagine this:
You're sitting in a S Class scout and want to map out a couple of Sectors. You're opening the Map, put like - let's say 10 various Satellite drop points, 5 various Resource probe drop points and some regular waypoints for map exploration all at once and a dock at homebase waypoint a last and "Queue" yourself a "missionboard" before taking off and don't ever have to look at the map again until you're done.

that would be absolutely GREAT!

This would also encourage the player to do things by themself, and not send out his minions for every "planning heavy" task.

[flywlyx]

This reminds me of a previous suggestion where any order a player gives to a ship would convert into a mission when the player takes control, and then revert back to an order once the player relinquishes control.

It’s a small detail, but it would make things significantly more convenient for players.

[GCU Grey Area]

This reminds me of a previous suggestion where any order a player gives to a ship would convert into a mission when the player takes control, and then revert back to an order once the player relinquishes control.

It’s a small detail, but it would make things significantly more convenient for players.

Unless, for example, the player has set guidance to a pirate ship that really needs to be dealt with & taking control of a suitable ship replaces guidance with a mission to do whatever that ship was doing. Suddenly the useful guidance is gone, replaced by something which will often be utterly irrelevant.

It would be much the same as when guidance (or current mission) is automatically replaced when accepting a new mission, a 'feature' which I very much dislike & would prefer didn't happen. Would really not want this to also happen merely by taking control of a ship which has orders in it's queue. That would just make an annoying thing happen much more often.

Would find it distinctly inconvenient to have to pause the game, remove all orders from the ship's queue before taking control, deal with the pirate, then reinstate whatever orders the ship I borrowed had before I took control. Much more micro to have to deal with rather than simply taking control, shooting the pirate, then leaving the ship to get on with whatever it was previously doing.

[Agrefits]

Please don't mix up the topics. Thats two different suggestions, i'd actually like to discuss the one from OP, because that approach would actually massively benefit the gameplay alot as it would reduce the usage of the map inbetween various tasks and would definately result in a significat more fluid gameplay.

[flywlyx]

Would find it distinctly inconvenient to have to pause the game, remove all orders from the ship's queue before taking control, deal with the pirate, then reinstate whatever orders the ship I borrowed had before I took control. Much more micro to have to deal with rather than simply taking control, shooting the pirate, then leaving the ship to get on with whatever it was previously doing.

From my point of view, when the players taking control, if they have an active mission tracker, the mission will become the current order which is the main point of this change. And after the pirate is killed, the mission is completed and order will be removed too, so the add/remove all orders process isn't necessary at all.

I’d say the main challenge is deciding which orders should follow the player and which should stay with the ship. In your case, you might prefer the order to follow you wherever you go, while in OP’s situation, he’d likely want the order to remain tied to the ship. This could be handled through a global order setting, or determined contextually—for example, if the order is issued while the player is piloting the ship, it stays with the ship; if issued while not in command, it follows the player.

Please don't mix up the topics. Thats two different suggestions, i'd actually like to discuss the one from OP, because that approach would actually massively benefit the gameplay alot as it would reduce the usage of the map inbetween various tasks and would definately result in a significat more fluid gameplay.

It's essentially the same concept—integrating the mission system for players with the order system for NPCs.

[Agrefits]

It's essentially the same concept—integrating the mission system for players with the order system for NPCs.

It's similar but not the Same, the way i understand his Request is giving the Player himself, a Guidance queue as in using the Mission Guidance Mechanics just like the regular mission do. Which i guess would be a lot simpler to integrate, not having to fiddle with Order Queue of NPCs and whatever possibilities of screw ups you can archieve doing so

The small figure you control , if you want. wether you are standing on the Dock, are in a Spacesuit, or on a Ship. If you plop down a guidance it does not show up on the order list of the ship you're controlling aswell afaik.

[flywlyx]

It's similar but not the Same, the way i understand his Request is giving the Player himself, a Guidance queue as in using the Mission Guidance Mechanics just like the regular mission do. Which i guess would be a lot simpler to integrate, not having to fiddle with Order Queue of NPCs and whatever possibilities of screw ups you can archieve doing so

The small figure you control , if you want. wether you are standing on the Dock, are in a Spacesuit, or on a Ship. If you plop down a guidance it does not show up on the order list of the ship you're controlling aswell afaik.

Not exactly—if you look at what he's asking, it's clear he wants orders generated by the NPC order system to be added to the player's mission list.

In addition, when I sit down at the controls of one of my ships that already had orders, then the set of orders it had could turn into a mission for me. It would not be a mandatory mission, and I could always ignore it, cancel it, or switch to a different mission.

If the ship I am assuming command of is a subordinate (like for instance a freighter assigned to trade for a station), the station manager could assign me trade missions (eg buy 300 hull parts at your factory, then sell those 300 hull parts to the shipyard), which I could then personally help fulfill if I wish, by following yellow guidance markers.

[kurushimi0]

The developers could maybe accomplish this with two new keybinds:

1. A keybind that sets guidance for whatever the current order in the ship queue is; and
2. A keybind that lets the player delete the current order in the queue and automatically set guidance for the next order in the queue (if any).

The first keybind would allow the player to easily switch to guidance for a current order, even if they accept missions along the way that set guidance to something else -- it would allow the player to easily bring back guidance for the current ship order if it's interrupted for any reason.

The second keybind would allow the player to proceed to the next order in the queue, regardless of what the current order is. For some orders, such as completing a trade order, perhaps it would be unnecessary -- but it would provide a way to mark an order in the queue as completed, regardless of the order type (and without the complicated programming logic that might be involved in determining whether a player has finished any given order). For ships with repeating orders, the keybind could simply advance to the next order in the queue without deleting the current one. It would also allow a player to say "close enough", if the current order is something like a waypoint.

Also, maybe somewhere in the lower left where the count of unread messages appears, there could be a visual indication of how many orders are in the current ship's order queue, so the player could easily see whether or not guidance would be available. (Incidentally, this information would also be useful to solve an unrelated issue: when I sit down to pilot a ship that has a "Dock and Wait" or "Fly and Wait" command active, I am often annoyed when the ship unexpectedly flies away when I exit the ship in my spacesuit, etc. Being able to easily see that the "Dock and Wait" order is in the queue when I'm piloting the ship, and having an easy keybind to mark the order as completed (deleting it from the list), would be very helpful!)

[Falcrack]

Not exactly—if you look at what he's asking, it's clear he wants orders generated by the NPC order system to be added to the player's mission list.

These missions for that specific ship would only be visible and available when you are sitting down at the controls of the ship with that set of orders. Otherwise, if it showed missions from all the ships you owned, that would be too much.

On the mission manager, there are currently 3 categories of missions. Important Missions, Upkeep Missions, and Guidance Missions. Guidance missions currently are set when you manually right click on the map and select "Start Guidance to Position" or "Start Guidance to Object". What I suggest is that the mission would be generated based on existing ship orders at the time you sit down at the controls, or based on orders you give yourself while at the ship controls.

If you sit down at a ship with existing orders, those ship orders would not become active by default as the active mission. But they would become available to select as a mission in the Guidance Missions category.

If you give yourself an order while sitting at the controls of a ship, then it would automatically become the active mission.

[Agrefits]

Please Devs! listen to this guy

[flywlyx]

If you sit down at a ship with existing orders, those ship orders would not become active by default as the active mission. But they would become available to select as a mission in the Guidance Missions category.

If you give yourself an order while sitting at the controls of a ship, then it would automatically become the active mission.

I’d prefer if the mission automatically activated when there’s no active mission, or alternatively, if there were a keybinding to do it manually.
Right now, switching between different missions feels quite inconvenient.