Request - Stop flying me into asteroids on autopilot...Please

[Apostate]

As you are a continuing to develop the game (thank you so much), and presently focussed on flight models and the like, do think you could Stop flying me into asteroids on autopilot...Please.
It seems a bit worse on the new 7.50 beta?

Look, sometimes I like just to be flown around and look out of the window; It's a single player game, so why not, it's relaxing, especially in terran sections when variations on a theme of borodin is playing.

But I think there's a bit of a rationale here as well:
1) This game has been around for a while, and this is an old feature - we now live in a real world where vehicles can almost drive themselves without colliding - and that's still newish tech, so it's going to improve - it no longer makes sense that 'future' tech won't have at a minimum the same skills. Sure, there's physics involved, and travel speed is pretty fast, but I manage my speed driving on the highway, a lot of modern vehicles can do almost as well, so why on earth can't a high tech space ship?
2) I drive for a living - you don't plan a long distance route by plotting a course through every city centre you can find. Why does the auto pilot even go through asteroid fields when it's travelling to a sector 20 gates away? I know some sectors are full of asteroids, but most aren't - the auto pilot avoids hazardous space now, when that is possible, so why doesn't it box around an asteroid field? It is never faster just to fly straight through, so it doesn't make any economic sense to do so, unless you are mining or trading inside the field.
3) What do routine auto pilot collisions add to game play? I enjoy the first few hours of a new game when I need to manually dock every time, and haven't mapped all the sectors, etc., but once I'm managing fleets and multiple stations, I've got better things to spend my time on - I'm a space billionaire, so I hire a competent driver and sit in the passenger seat drinking cocktails and making deals with presidents. If I want some flying fun, I tool up a modded ship and go kick some Xenon about. At what point is ramming asteroids whilst commuting supposed to be entertaining?
4) Finally, why, just why, can the autopilot not approach a station, with radar and full comms active, without flying straight into the largest bit of solid metal it can find? Have you considered the impact that level of incompetence would have on the economy: 100 credits for the spaceamazon delivery , + 20billion insurance surcharge to cover predicted legal costs and damages - doesn't work. Autopilot collisions with stations should be the subject of intense media coverage and political babbling on the vanishingly rare occasions when they happen - corporate and governmental heads should roll, and interspecies sanctions and conflicts would be real possibilities for routine offenders.

So basically I'm suggesting that the mechanic as is is totally redundant. You could certainly develop it into something, I'm not suggesting space collisions would never happen, but as a routine 'two or three hits per journey' event, its just an out of date frustration factor: TLDR; change it or lose it!

re: the beta overall - what jumps out is the separation of boost and shield - I love it - I managed an intense bit of combat in a small ship that would have obliterated me before the change - It wasn't too easy, it was intense and fun, but much less dependent on me having piloting skills I don't have than in the past. That opens up possibilities for the player, such as roleplaying a skilful 'little guy', and holding off on churning out the billions and building doom fleets. I enjoy that sort of thing, so it's nice that in the early game I can pick some fights with a chance of winning. As the player can always reach a point where they are untouchable, it doesn't, to my mind, make the game too easy. It just opens out a few more options for those of us who can't fly like Han Solo.

[CBJ]

While the post mentions the current Public Beta, it doesn't really meet the criteria set out in the Public Beta Feedback forum rules, so I've moved it over to the main forum. If you want to post there about a specific issue (e.g. collisions with asteroids) then feel free to do so, but please make sure your post follows the forum rules (no feature requests in that forum, one issue per thread, provide the details requested in the rules, etc.).