Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hello everyone!
I'd like to propose some more commands, or options to the commands, in addition to the ones (Approach, Orbit, Keep at range) we already have regarding the piloting of ships in Eve.

1) The "Approach" command could have an attribute [0,100] to set that defines the percentage of turn that your ship takes while spiraling closer to your target. At 0 you approach the target as the current command works, in a straight line. Increasing the value to 100 the approach maximizes the transversal of your ship for at maximum one circle around the enemy ship. This would be similar to the manual spiraling technique.
Taking for example the target ship sitting still and your ship at any distance, with the maximum value [100] your ship would describe a 360° spiral before getting to the other ship, [75] would mean 270° and so on.
I understand this would get trickier if the target ship would be moving. It could be solved introducing a slider that controls this value, so the pilot can modify it in real time if the spiral approach doesn't work or takes too long.
The plane of the approach spiral would be the one created by the axis of your ship when you issue the command and the enemy ship considered as a point. The direction, clockwise or counterclockwise would be the easiest to follow factoring in where your ship is facing.

2) The "Orbit" command would work like the "Approach" command, with the same slider governating the approach but instead of landing at 0 on the target you would land at the desired orbit.
In addition it could be useful to indicate in the window where you can set your default orbit or better in the fitting window/simulator the minimum orbit at maximum speed that the ship can describe. This would be useful when using afterburners and microwarpdrives when tight orbits decrease your speed dramatically.
The plane in which the orbit lay would be the same as before.

3) Similarly would work the "Keep at range" command. Currently in the game if you reach the desired distance you would slow down or stop and at that point this could mean that you die or that you could be in danger. The same slider as before would direct at first the approach to the "Keep at range" distance. Then the ship would describe an orbit at maximum speed perpendicular to the direction of the ship or object and also keeping it at the desired distance. This way you can have a transversal velocity.
In the first stage [0] would be a straight approach and the [100] a 360° spiral approach. When you arrive at the desired distance you could sit still or slow down just to keep up [0] or you could establish an orbit perpendicular to your last direction before reaching the "Keep at range" distance at maximum velocity [100] or at a lower one [75] and so on.
It could happen that the maximum possible velocity would describe an orbit with a radius higher than the default range, in that case the max speed will be the one that allow the orbit with the desired distance.

To make it easier there should be a section in the settings where you could set the default positions of the slider in the 4 situations: "Approach", "Orbit", first part of "Keep at range" and second part of "Keep at range". Also in the selected item window the last command issued should be highlighted (somehow separating the first and second part of the "Keep at range" command) to better understand what the slider will modify.

This way we also could:
- make spiral approaches without manual piloting;
- define the orbital plane you want;
- describe a perpendicular orbit at a desired range from the enemy or object, still or moving.

Since I play a spaceship game I would like to at least be able to do these things even if I've lived without them for now.

I don't have any idea of how difficult implementing such things would be... Could it be possible to have it in the future? Too complicated?
What are your opinions?

Well, I was actually thinking of solo PvP or PvE, making the orbit that you want could be useful. You still need to decide the direction you are facing when issuing commands and also the right approach.
Manual spiraling is not the one thing that concerned me. Care to elaborate further on your comment?

Yeah any solo pilot worth his salt is manually piloting and only using commands for adjustments

Pretty much what shawn has said:-

If you want your movement to be automated, expect it to be less than smart. Want to move smart, fly it yourself.

Separates the good players from bad.

I understand all of your opinions and thanks for your answers. I was thinking about a way to increase the piloting precision but I can see that it could flatten the experience. I think you could all agree though that the current manual piloting is a little ancient for a spaceship game. The double click in space and the unrensponsive arrow keys are not what I would expect from such a game.
I understand that Eve is not a dogfighting game but still some improvements would be nice.

The main thing that I wanted to address was the fact that you can't decide what orbit you make around a moving or stationary target, and that could have been maybe resolved with what I proposed.

So, I thought another thing, forget about the OP. Would it be acceptable to have the "Orbit" command similar to how the holding "Approach" works?
Like, while I hold down the "Orbit" key first I decide the angle aroud the ship axis at which I would like to describe a circle and then the radius of said circle, but this could be or not be tied to any object in space. In this case you eliminate the dumbed down spiral approach since you can't do that anymore, but you can decide better your speed and velocity without making it too simple because the player need to decide the orbit and it could be a good one or bad one, also it's not relative to a moving target so you need to adjust it manually every time it's not good anymore.
Would this improve the experience or do you think it would fill the gap between new and expereinced pilots?