So, can my captain fly me somewhere?

[OH LOOK MORE BUGS]

I've employed a captain and they are assigned to this starter ship, he is sitting in the cockpit. Can he autopilot or fly/do something for me? while i'm in the ship

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by eXisor:

The AI tries to fly straight through a station to get to the dock on the other side. You'll get stuck in something, guarunteed. When that happens you've got to teleport to a ship in another sector so the OOS mechanic allows it to escape and dock.

Yes it does do that. There is however a very simple way to avoid this happening with 100% success rate and very little effort.

What you do when you want your co-pilot to land you at a station is is to queue two orders. The first one to fly to a convenient point in space with a clear run at the dock, the second one the actual dock order. You can see where the dock is on all stations if you zoom in the map far enough.

Originally posted by eXisor:

Good point, but this is not impossible. All airports do this every day. Craft are put in holding patterns that have natural exit points with clear, predefined paths to the existing landing strips.

There are at least three reasons I would say why this idea is not in the game:

1. It would place limitations on station design and create all sorts of problems with station expansion. It would also make station building much more difficult and subject to serious risk of fatal error especially for new players.

2. X4 is based on a fundamental design principle that each and every ship in the game decides what to do minute by minute itself according to it's personal AI algorithm. This design principle has very far reaching consequences for how the game plays. There is nothing anywhere in the game code that orchestrates multiple ships movements by design.

3. One of those consequences is that ships do not follow preset patterns of movement or form queues at stations which makes them look far more organic, real and interesting to watch. If you observe the local station traffic which does follow preset flight patterns you can see what the effect of that is visually. If you stand on the dock of one of your busy stations you can see why Egosoft do not do this for big ships, it looks much better.

[Palladin888]

Auto pilot kicks in travel mode every time i use it. It gets a bit jankie around objects like stations and asteroids but over all I always get where I want to be. I spend most of my time managing stations so use it a good bit.

I also have large ships fairy me around without issue. Sometimes objects get int he way and delay it a bit but it works pretty good.

[PeaceMaker]

Originally posted by trooperrob:

would be better if there was a 'flight circle' around the station. ships would fly to a certain distance from the station, then try to adopt the course, circling round the station if needed.
Rather than just trying to dive through the hull.

Ah, you mean like a proper approach and landing procedure that every aircraft goes through in reality? Surely that would make it a lot easier for the AI?

That seems obvious, but didn't quite happen for some reason.

[noviastar]

have your cap fly you all over the place. run your space empire

[Humble]

I almost do it all the time, had pilot fly for me, but sooner you get headquarter and reseach max teleport, the better.

I do teleport to friendly station or my ship already docked at station or my own station, then command pilot ship fly somewhere I will need to go in OOS. once that ship got there where I should go, then I teleport over there, you can do from your personal office in Headquarter and stay there to manage empire while your ship going where you want it go in OOS, it's much faster and less chance getting stuck that way, assumed it's not lag due mega headquarter or sector where mining is (since Mining is best in OOS, not IS so that mean better off headquarter in no mining sector and that help not get lag, same time no mining sector next to where rich mining sector to feed headquarter.

Most of time I had no issues katana or astrid flying for me when I am not in mood to do teleport here to there all the time. Rare it's got stuck, but only if it not normal jump gate, I had no issues with normal jump (build by ancient race), but there is little isssue Terran jumpgate in sector where it's not normal (one build by Terran, not build by ancient)

This is way, idea.

I do wish they fix or redesigned Terran Jump gate, it's long and higher risk a.i got stuck, not simple round, while Ancient jump gate is plain simple round.

[PeaceMaker]

Regardless, I ALWAYS have my NPC pilot fly while I observe. I only take over for combat.

While people complain incessantly, the AI pilot is good enough to tolerate as your driver.

[Kitet]

I think someone necroed a 5-year old thread. Between then and now many things may have changed. I for one experience that very rarely. I often order a ride and while we go, I do management and planning tasks. Once in fifty times I hear we bumped into the wall of a Wharf or something, but slamming into other side of the dock or taking off and then pointing ship's nose towards the dock and boosting is what identified pirates do that know what's coming to them with me on their tail. I didn't hit a normal dock with any of my pilots. Or I did but it was so rare I don't remember.

[Bert]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.