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"Remote control" and "Auto pilot" issues

EDGE shared this bug 2 years ago
Won't Fix

I'm been working on auto docking and there has been a fair bit of problems with it. I'm not sure what's a bug or faulty game design so feel free to move the post if needed.

The ship is small, it's got a drill with atmospheric thrusters and is only equipped with a passenger seat as its supposed to be controlled remotely from that seat.

When it docks it docks by connecting to two hinges from the bottom up, so it needs to be precise. This is something it's capable of doing quite well. The problem however lies in the approach vectors/waypoints.

I have one waypoint far out that defines the direction of the first approach. The a second waypoint is underneath the connections and the last one at where the connection is going to happen. When it goes in for the first approach it starts by going up and over the next way point instead of flying in a straight line towards it. In other words it curves the approach. This is a big issue as it makes it impossible to control and specify the direction you want it to fly and approach and as a result it crashes in to obstacles around the destination.

Also, turning on collision avoidance doesn't help as the avoidance starts happening at such a far distance from the blocks it might have collided with, that it prevents it from reaching the waypoint's.

I figured out that if you add more waypoints in between the main waypoints you can somewhat force it to stop elevating too far out of alignment but the result still looks awful as it bounces from one waypoint to the next.

I dont know if this is intended or some kind of bug but it's critical that we are allowed to specify the exact direction we want something to fly when creating "auto pilot routes". It needs to change to fly in a direct line between the two point in order to fix the problem.

Note: Adding weight to the inventory seems to make the behaviour worse and adds to the unpredictability of the course the ship is going to take when trying to reach the next waypoint.

Sidenote: In addition to this, the only way to access the remote control and timer blocks needed to remotely fly it from the "passenger seat" and the "auto docking", is to go in to the "Control menu" wile sitting in the seat. Since you're able to access it through the seat, I dont understand why you can't also put it on the seats toolbar so you dont have to scroll up and down for every other thing you might need to use in order to make everything work.

I have prepared two save-files so that you can see the problems first hand if you need to, so let me know if you need them with the explanation on how to activate everything.

Replies (10)

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I forgot to mention an other problem when using the "remote control block" to lay out waypoint.

As ,mentioned I'm using three waypoints to "auto undock" and then I'm repeating the same waypoints backwards in order to "auto dock". I've put the waypoints in this order 3,2,1,1,2,3 and put the "Flight mode" on the "remote control block" to "Circle". It undocks from waypoint 3 to 1 and then turnes the "autopilot" off. That lets me now take control over the ship and fly it where ever I want. When I get back I turn the "auto pilot" on, and it picks up from where it left off in the "waypoint sequence" to "auto dock". Now if by any chance I need to reload, instead of picking up where it left of in the "waypoint sequence", it resets the hole sequence and therefore crashes straight in to the first waypoint. Selecting the waypoint you want it to start from does not work and trying to reset doesn't work ether. This means that there is no way other than rearranging the hole sequence to be able to make it auto dock again.

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Two more issues appeared wile still trying to get this working.

* Wile setting up action for the different waypoint I had the need to adjust the Speed limit from 3ms to 100ms but because you cant specify the increments you need it to raise to, and because there is only one layer of toolbar for each "waypoint action setup" You need one Timer to solely raise the speed limit and one to solely to decrease it. Not only that, but you need three way points for it to repeat to get the speed to max or minimum. Is it not possible to be given multiple levels of toolbar in the same way you do on most other things and or be given the choice of how high you need it to go.

*Also and more importantly... After setting up multiple actions at the different waypoint I had the need to review the different actions I had set up to make sure that they had been set up correctly or to figure out why something when wrong. On a lot the actions there is no information about what that particular action is doing when hovering over the action in the Action setup screen. Even though there are Icons that give some indication on some of them a lot of them are identical and offer little explanation to what the action is doing. One example of this is The Action to turn "autopilot off" on the "Remote control" block and at the same time turn "Auto collision" off on the "Remote control block". This issue for a lot of other actions too and a simple fix for it would simply be to have the specific action explained when hovering the mouse over it. Allit's doing now is just stating the obvious. - Yes it's the Auto control box, I could already see that.

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And hopefully lastly,.. a big annoyance is the fact that you have to disconnect from the "Remote control" connection in order to activate the "Auto pilot" in the "Control menu". It's more intuitive that the Auto pilot is selectable and automatically disconnects you from the "Remote control" when selecting it, as there could be a number of reasons to why the Auto pilot is greyed out.

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Hello, EDGE,

thanks for letting us know. However, it´s really hard to reproduce it without the world/save and without some reliable steps to reproduce, so I can follow them.

You think it might be possible to share those? If you can share a video of this bug happening, that would be great as well! That way I can see exactly what the problem is and where it is happening.

About the last comment of yours... that´s by design (so far). If you feel that it is wrong, please open new thread in the feedback section, so designers and others can take a look on it there and decide whether this functionality needs some adjustment.

Kind Regards

Keen Software House: QA Department

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Sorry for the late respons it's to easy to miss out on comments to these posts

I've created a save file that show you a undock and docking sequence I eventually got working. If you pay close attention you can see how it curves the approaches to the next way point. As you can probably imagine, it's going to create problems when you need the approaches to be exact.

Instructions: Access the remote control and hit Autopilot to dock. then do the same to Undock.

Note: If needed you can take manual control of the ship by "Remote control" after the "undocking" sequence and add more waypoints between Waypoint D4 (with 1 action) and D4 (with 2 actions) on the "Remote control".

Good luck and keep it somewhat levelled.

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Hello, EDGE,

please see this attached thread that my colleague was working on. You think it might be same-ish, connected anyhow?

As that one is already properly reproduced, might be good idea to compare these two.

Thanks for an answer and/or any update on this that you can share.

Kind Regards

Keen Software House: QA Department

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It's the same-ish only that I'm Isolating one spesific problem with the way it's figures out how to approach the next waypoint on a planet surface. The other post is more general and doesn't seem to mention this specifically. What they have in common is that there are problems with the way the AI is calculating how to fly.

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A save was request and he offered. Then he was just redirected. Has anyone read his post? It makes sense even without a save and can be reproduced.

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Hello, Engineers!

It´s already quite long time from when this issue was originally posted as well as from the last comment.

Are you still experiencing it? Or was it fixed in the meantime.

Thanks in advance for confirming me current situation.

Kind Regards

Keen Software House: QA Department

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Hello, Engineers!

Because there is no new comment from you, and we are unable to reproduce the issue on our own, I will close this thread now as outdated.

If you or any other player will experience this issue again, please make a new thread and provide all needed info there.

Thank you for understanding.

Kind Regards

Keen Software House: QA Department

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