Yes, you can give your ship an autopilot:First, you need to open the Lua console. To do this you press the '`' key, which is also the '~' key and is usually to the left of the '1'. Then type Game.player:AddEquip('AUTOPILOT') and press enter.

I think if you sell the equipment off your current ship before buying a new one, you can then buy them back for your new ship. We should maybe make that automatic and maybe have current equipment carry over to the new ship when possible.

We should also maybe give ships a tech level that, like equipment, limits where they can be bought.

Currently, any system not near Sol has too low a tech level to have most of the equipment.

As for busy spaceports, the currently docked ships will leave, usually in less than a day, sometimes as little as a couple of hours.

Thanks Ziusudra for your advise, I will try it.

No matter, it's normal in dev stage, that are details that can be tuned later. Usually I not play computer games so I don't know what is the state of the art in games of this kind, but the physics simulation is well done.

Ok, good to know, currently I have a ship with 54 LY max jump (natrix) and always jump at the leftmost richable system on the map. Now at Essex system, on the galaxy map the green dot apparently doesn't move but galaxy is a big place. I was looking for the ship 'wave' I found it in the system close to Essex where I first long-jumped (with a yellow star), exchanged my natrix with wave. When I realized it had no autopilot I got back the natrix but loose autopilot.

I'm still here to boring you with my stupid questions, this is the last then I'll quit.

How works the 'fuel scoop' tool? I installed it then made a fun try to gather H from Jupiter but all I've got is a very hot hull and a bunch of manouvers to stay alive. Thanks for your patience.

Go deep and fast into Jupiter's atmosphere. Approach the horizon, if you want to be able to fly away afterwards. Atmospheric shielding will keep the temperature down.

Many thanks Brianetta, it works. In my first attempt the hull temp raised to 70% when entering in the atmosphere, now it was very low, like on any rocky planet with normal atmosphere. Ok, no matter, I succeeded.

I'm at the civilized boundary in the direction of the center of the galaxy, I docked on a planet there and this is what appened: three ships on a single dock, however, no errors and no damage.

[hsimg] [/hsimg]

Now I try to proceed in nowhere land gathering H and using the API to refuel in the same way Ziusudra shown me to install autopilot. Normally I visit only few systems, however some have big stars (multiple systems) with no docks and in normal conditions (with no API refuel) there is no way to explore them, the planets are at a minimum distance of 300 AU.

Sorry if I'm not and 'ordinary' user but I never played Elite or FFT2 (and never heard about), I thought Pioneer was a space sim program with the ability to take a ship and navigate it, not a game, well a game with no defined goal. I found it close to my expectations and very well done despite the fact it's still in an early development stage. Thanks again for your help.

Uh, I don't think that's supposed to happen! 😆

Congratulations, I think you just discovered a bug!

It's already logged as "Monsters under the bed" (-:

Normally, they're under the pad, but the terrain is highly sloped here. This bug has a fix - which version were you playing?

eheh, skilled in that.

version 20 original no nightly builds, in windows. However I rigged my bike, may be something go wrong for that reason. It's a Wave with 64 LY max jump and 20t cargo free (18t H for 64 LY) raised a bit the thrust power to have about the same handling as the original (more or less), however it drinks fuel like a truck, a tank to about 30 UA. I spent some time to tune it, at first attempt it was always 'long' when travelling with autopilot, crashing on the destination planet in a fun way, it try strange positions while decelerating at planet proximity without success or while exit from atmosphere Pioneer close with no errors, no message, simply it close. Now it seems to work fine.