Autopilot is working barelly and not usable.

Dear SE Team.

I am quite new to the game but reaching it´s limits. I play the game without any mods or changings. I just installed it and played (I acivated experimental mode but never used a script or the programming block. That was planned for later doings but i never got there).

Actually the vanilla autopilot / remote control block is my biggest problem. If it ever worked propperly before, it is not working for me yet.

For example, i reported a problem with my first test drone not long ago.

What i found out was:

Phenomenon 1:

- I created a drone which i could controll remotely fine. It had everything needed on it. (I was on a 1g planet)

- I was able to give the remote controll block / autopilot easy commands like: "Fly to this GPS coordinate and fly back. Dock on the connector... turn off battery and engines and so on." Worked somewhat okay.

- If i started the autopilot manually at the remote controll block during the drone was connected to my base-connector the hole drone turbines stopped working. When i unlock the connector then the drone was doing nothing. Autopilot was on but all turbines had lost the direction setting (Which is shown directly after there name. Left/right/up/down... there was no direction text anymore). After switching the autopilot off i was not able to fly the drone. Turbines were not responding my inputs. Even dismantle and rebuild the turbines did nothing.

- So i build the hole drone new. This time i placed a cockpit (i heared about setting directions for a vehicle is done with placing a cockpit so i hopet that this will solve the problem) and dismantled it. But after switching the autopilot on during connected to my base-connector... same problem occurs.

- So i testet a bit arround and i found out if i manually disconnect my drone from my base-connector and start the auto pilot "after" this it will do it´s tasks. But why is this totally ruin my drone? And totally made it unusable. Even a game restart did not fixed the turbine problem.

For me this is a big issue bug. Actually i thought a game which passed alpha and beta version would not have problems like that.

But second phenomenon/s:

I build a smal grid freighter and did some testings with several remote controll blocks all on the upper side of a conveyor which is directly placed on top of a conveyor. Some timer blocks and some GPS waypoints for testing the docking procedure on the planet.

- Docking only with GPS waypoints and the remote controll block seems impossible... i did a timer block with docking commands and it worked ( worked with every remote control block i placed which is at most 1 block away from the center remote control block). Docking with every rcb worked several times.

I had a plan for it to fly to 0g, dock at a asteroid base, loade cargo, fly back and unloade it. Therefore i manually had flown to each GPS waypoint to create it and then i startet testing from the asteroid base back to surface.

I use the following blocks to controll:

1: remote control block: Fly to and dock at homebase with low speed (8m/s) which starts a timer block after reaching docking position at landing connector and shutt off all systems.

2: remote control block: Fly to and dock at home base with low speed (8m/s) which starts a timer block after reaching docking position at ore removal connector. Start a second timer to start parking manouver to landing connector after some time.

3: remote control block: Fly to and dock at asteroid base with low speed (8m/s). First timer docking procedure. Second timer started flight back.

4: remote contol block: Start from homebase and fly up until 0g with fast speed (100m/s).

5: remote control block: Start from asteroid base and fly back near to home base with fast speed (100m/s). After that switch to Docking manouver with second remote control block.

So i used the blocks to control several way´s seperate with different speed (slow speed for docking is crucial otherwise it flys straight into the ground and explode). The timer blocks switched the drives, the battery and the connectors on and off or started the fly back after loading the cargo.

And now my try´s to start and bring it back from my asteroid base to my home base ore connector.

I had some issues with it bevore but here are the main problems:

- Autopilot switched on. It flys and after reaching the edge at 0g it turned to the base on the surface and fly to it. To spare some energy i shut the engines off and with a timer block after seveal minutes on again. But the engines (hydrogen engines) would do nothing... enough fuel... switched on... but not working. Same with the ion-engines, not that they do much in a atmosphere with 1g but just to check if i did something wrong. Enough energie but no engines worked... and after crash landing i could not bring any engine online again... seemed to be the same probelm as i describet with my drone before. But theres a difference: The direction of the engines were not gone as with the drone. I could see the flames which indicetes he engine is on but nothing happens. This occured 2 times. During the second test i switched the autopilot off bevore the timer should start all engines and tryed to start them manually. it did not work. Same problem.

- After that i tried it again but did not switched off the ion-engines after accellerating from the 0g back to surface. So i saw all the way down the autopilot using the ion engines. After some time i switched on my hydrogen-engines as before and now they worked. The only thing i did different was not to switch off the ion-engines.

- So allready progress... but beware... bevore the vessel reached the gps waypoint ... ... .. 100m abouve my docking connector it started rotating and flying just 10m/s and slower 1000m abouve the point (settings were at 100m/s and the engines were way strong enough). So it spinned and flew very slow but it reached it destination. So okay until then...

- It started the manouvering to dock at my connector. The same docking manouver as i testet bevore i left the planet. With one difference. Now it will park and switch off the autopilot way higher so that it could not dock at the connectior. It falls down and partly explodes.

I feel like i tryed longer to make the autopilot run as i played the actuall game yet...

I have attached my savegame (compressed with win rar) and my log as on your troubleshooting website describet. It starts with my vessel docked on my asteroid base.

I hope this helps out and i would really like to hear from you if this was allways like that in the game and if you will work and improve / solve the problem.

For me it takes much posibillities away and if i had known about that before i purchased the game... i would not have considered to buy it in a state like this.

Dont get me wrong, the game has potential. I saw much videos about space engineers and was highly interested. Unfortunately much in the automation functionalities... which seems to now work if you not use mods from the community and leave the original state of the game... (Which then you do not support).

I hope you can excuse my tone but after much testing and seeing that somewhat main functions do not work i got a bit upset.

So again, i hope my examples helps out a bit, if you have further questions feel free to write me back. I would like to help you out if i am able.

So for now, last thing to do is to wish you a nice weekend.

With best regard

Stefan