Auto Pilot Destruction

[Nirnias]

Im sure this topic was covered but im new to these forums and i cant seem to find a topic that covers it.

When flying on auto pilot i understand that sometimes the ship can get confused and ram into an asteroid and die or on several cases come out of a star gate turn to the side and continuously ram into the star gate until it explodes (Which the first and second time i actually thought were funny)

But last night i finally managed to put together enough pennies to get another hauler and to start manually trading with him (until i can figure out how to get it to do it on its own)

I was coincidentally docked at the same station my hauler was and i told him to go to system next door to buy some stuff. I undocked the same way and flew close to just admire the pretty ship structure compared to my own. Then i flew away while still looking at my hauler and he zoomed around the side of the station (somewhat) and smacked straight into the station, exploding in pretty colors.

I wasnt to fussed as i could just reload the game but my point is i only actually noticed this because i was looking at the hauler at the time.. If i was in another system and it did this and it suddenly vanished from my property windows id be REALLY confused. And this is just one hauler, iv heard that when you really get going you can have dozens of them running..

How common is it that this happens that haulers commit suicide? Would hate to set up a hauling fleet and then watch them vanish from my property windows one at a time over a period.

Especially when i figure out how to use that Mk3 trading implant that lets them trade without me telling them so i can leave my pc running and they can trade in sector or universe and i can go do other things like go to work lol.

[Alan Phipps]

Not being able to see the actual situation, I can only make a guess. I would say that your flying close might have limited the hauler's AI choice of course due to collision-avoidance of where it thought you might be going. Evasion of other ships' courses is a common cause for the basic AI driving ships into big stationary objects.

The real question is whether the hauler would have crashed if you had not been watching from close by. Also if you were in another system as you asked about above, this could not possibly happen as there is no collision detection when you are OOS and so things can only collide and be lost when you are IS. All OOS losses are through enemy action or the result of a scripted action.

Moving to Universe forum for further comments from Players.

Edit for spelling.

[Nirnias]

Ah thank you, i was thinking that on weather since im in system and objects are loaded around me, where as when im not in system there not.. Thats understandable. That in itself cuts down the probability of it happening significantly, along with the theory that i flew close to it so it might of messed up its AP path.

But if that was the case i hope it would not happen if an NPC ship flew close to the hauler, i.e when one was undocking at the same time at the same station.

thanks for the quick reply though. Clears up alot.

[Alan Phipps]

There tends to be a gap between ships undocking from stations. Also ships are prevented from docking while a ship is in the undocking process. That said, there can still be accidents when you are IS and there a lot of ships circling around the same station as the AI is pretty basic and is looking after a huge number of ships at the same time so the span of AI attention each individual gets can become quite small.

[rolandthemad]

I started my first new game and got to watch my flight instructor repeatedly ram into the nearby Argon Equipment station. I kept taking orders from him and flew around and then came back to see him still at it. Eventually he exploded.

:? :? :?

[p00fer]

one would expect a flight instructor to actually know how to fly....


but yeah AI is known to be a hell of a mess when it comes to collision avoidance. best way to avoid collisions is to stay out of sector.