How can you make ships follow you from a sector with no gates?

[Kork]

I built a second ship in sector that has no jump gates. Then I ordered the ship to escort me so it would follow me around when I jump to another sector (using the jump drive). However the ship doesn't seem to be following me, even if I just jump to the adjacent sector. Is this supposed to work currently and if so, how can I make it work?

[Ravien]

You're doing it right. Assuming the second ship has a captain and long enough hyperdrive reach and is close enough to your ship, it should follow you when you jump.

 

Of course the AI is still a work in progress and bugs can happen.

[Uthael]

Yeah, a captain is mandatory. Try jumping when the ship is just next to you.

 

You can also put Hyperspace Upgrades in it to increase its jump distance, no blocks needed.

[Nachtu]

Also the AI ship has to have its hyperdrive ready if he has jumped recently. The thin blue bar next to the ship in your visuals indicates this.

[Kork]

Would the AI controlled -ship eventually follow me or will it get stuck when I jump before the AI controlled ship has finished it's warp cooldown?

[Nachtu]

Would the AI controlled -ship eventually follow me or will it get stuck when I jump before the AI controlled ship has finished it's warp cooldown?

 

I've never seen it work that way. My experience says it will get stuck. Though I haven't tested it too thoroughly.

[Blaine]

Seems to me the game needs actual wing/fleet mechanics. Fleets would be automatically limited to the lowest jump distance of all ships in the fleet, would be unable to jump until all hyperdrives are off cooldown, and would jump in unison when the lead ship jumps. After all, mechanically speaking, you're just being "teleported" by the game engine from one playfield to another, and can probably do it instantly with some dev console command.

 

Shouldn't be too hard to implement... probably. People say that a lot, but often it's more complicated for the developers than we'd think.

[Shrooblord]

Hm, that sounds like a good enough idea that it warrants me taking a snoop around the game code and seeing if I can't try to mod that in. As you put it, it doesn't sound too hard to do, but the results would be phenomenal.

But who knows... there may be... unforeseen obstacles to try and cross to get this functionality working. :P

[Blaine]

The other hurdle to jump (get it? jump? I'll be here all week) after implementing synchronized fleet jumps would be to do something about the terrible pathfinding in-system. This affects NPCs just as much as your captained AI ships, but the AI isn't a living being and doesn't care about enjoying the game, whereas we are alive and our ships behaving stupidly is very annoying.

 

There were major pathfinding issues in EGOSOFT's X series. It's mostly unavoidable. Partly, it's because most game AIs "cheat": The developers lay out paths, by hand or by algorithm, that the AI can then follow. You can't lay out preset paths in a 6doF game in which the contents of the 3D spaces that are system playfields can change due to asteroids being removed, stations being built or destroyed, etc. In addition, because it's 3D rather than 2D, pathfinding is that much more difficult due to a third dimension to consider; and because ships have inertial qualities and can't turn or stop on a dime (as can characters in a fantasy RPG, for example), it's more difficult still.

 

In light of pathfinding issues, covering most systems in asteroid fields seems like a poor decision. They should probably be moved to the fringes of every populated system, or even all to their own exclusive systems (with extra rich roids and claimable roids to compensate).

 

We may never have satisfactory in-system pathfinding, but we can have satisfactory fleet jumps, and we can clear out sectors so that the pathfinding isn't made that much worse by asteroids.

[Shrooblord]

Yes, pathfinding issues are likely to arise due to the highly variable nature of the 3D space Avorion has to work in. The inertial properties of the ships you mentioned are another hurdle I hadn't considered. But I'm not sure I know what you mean? I've not encountered big pathfinding issues myself; do you have an example?

 

EDIT:

Lol, the second I mention I've never seen something go wrong, I see my ship starting to spin about wildly on its axis after giving it an Escort Me order. Probably not a pathfinding thing, but still, typical. xD

 

EDIT DEUX:

After reading your post I've been paying more proper attention. I'd forgotten the fact that ships get "stuck" when another ship or an asteroid is inside of their "safe zone bounding box" about 0.2 km away from them. And that ships actively pilot themselves into those situations and then don't know how to get out. Yah, that kind of stuff needs some looking at.

 

----

 

More related to the OP, I had this same issue yesterday. I did some quick Googling and there were some Steam discussions that suggested it should "just work", with some people thinking the AI ship needs to be facing towards the jump direction, like the player does, and others saying that wasn't necessary at all..... so I tried jumping around some more, and it did "just work".

 

My tips for trying to get the AI to follow you:

[*]Tell the AI to Escort Me. Fly away for a bit and confirm they're following you.

[*]Jump from the ship with the shortest range; this way, you ensure the other ship will have the range to reach the destination.

[*]Wait a while in the arrival Sector. Sometimes it takes the AI ship a couple of seconds to get there. I've noticed that when missing my ship, I sometimes jump back to the Sector we just came from, only to find it gone there: by that time, it has arrived in the target Sector and now I'm the one playing catch-up.

[*]Wait til all ships in your fleet have their Hyperdrives charged up. In the current build of the game, you can see Hyperdrive charge progress as a dark blue vertical bar on the right-hand side of a friendly ship's light green "selection square". If you can't see a bar, that means the ship's Hyperdrive is charged.

[*]You can jump before all ships in the fleet have had their Hyperdrive charge up. However, then you'll have to wait a while in the target Sector before the others catch up. They do eventually come, in my experience. Keep in mind though that ships can only follow you one jump away: if you jump to an intermediary Sector, then to another target Sector, the fleet ships will only ever jump to the intermediary Sector.

[*]If at any point you Transfer into your AI ship and back to your own ship again, you need to remember to give the Escort Me order again; making an AI ship player-controlled removes all its orders, and doesn't reinstate them once you jump out. That's a mistake I make sometimes when trying to fleet jump.

 

Incidentally, Wormholes and Gates work the same way: you need to wait after you've arrived to give the AI ships time to physically move into the warp area of the Wormhole or Gate.