Player Features and Ideas Discussion

you cant set an autopilot to the station you are currently in... This might be intentional it might be legacy code at work, but that is one obstacle to your plan...

I like this idea as an option from the autopilot menu. Just put it at the bottom with "optimize route"

All it would have to do is add your existing waypoints to the end of the route in reverse order.

Have two options:

"Plot return trip (gates)" - Removes station docking waypoints from return trip

This one is generally useful if you're just taking non-standard routes to avoid camps, scout for wartargets, or other complex "patrol" routes.

"Plot return trip with stations" - Keeps station docking in return trip

This would be useful if you are trying to retrace a specific list of stations. Say you're picking up items from multiple stations on the way to a destination, then returning to those stations with fuel on your way back. This is a common occurance in complex moon mining or gas reaction POS setups that will presumably be part of upwell stations in the near future.

If you just want to go directly back to your start point after a complex route there's not really a need for all that. Just add a waypoint to the station as you undock after you have set up your route like gadget said there.

Return trip is not the same thing as adding a single waypoint.

Return trip is adding all of the waypoints in your current route to the end of the route in reverse order.

Adding the station you are leaving is only a return trip if your route only has one waypoint.

I assume you've never fueled like 20 POSes in different systems or put up buy orders in a chain of like 10 stations all spread out.

The entire purpose of having return trip ability to to change exactly these two things.

Because the entire idea is to set a route to the same location twice and end up back where you started so you can plan the entire trip in stead of having to re-input every waypoint in the entire route once you get to one end of it.

You know.

Because when you're going to eleven stations to set buy orders, pick up previous bought stuff, offload it at the market hub you were picking it up for, buying the **** you SELL at those same stations, and want to end up back at home....

Or going down a row of stations (or pos) to check ammo or fuel or hangar supply, getting to your supply source, then revisiting the same stations on the way back to eventually end up back where you started....

Or you're on a long patrol route looking for a whole corp's worth of targets you just did locates on...

You currently spend twice as much time planning a route, even though it is exactly the same route both ways, and that extra five minutes spent on fairly routine tasks for a massive amount of industry, hauling, and corp logistics roles is neither compelling gameplay nor does it add opportunities for conflict and thus content for other players.

I'm guessing if it didn't already exist you'd argue against "optimize route" and the safer/shorter filters as well since people can technically waste their time manually optimizing without those tools too.