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[ollobrains]

the legal - illegal activity detection part of the game is one area where coders / development contributions are probably needed, at the moment it seems to be ranged base in a very simple mechanism from station or base

[ollobrains]

I was wondering if taking full cargo of radioactive wastes from the space station orbiting New Hope and dumping it in a crater of the very nearby planet Hades would be detected , so after doing the deed i landed on Hades own orbiting station and checked the space police to see :

And i saw ... how random their random face generator can be

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I guess this part of the game really need some tweaks

the great thing with an open source game is anyone with any coding skill is more than welcome to contribute code

[Robsoie]

Looks like a deliberate choice there probably some easter egg or inside dev joke, as other space police random facegen deliver space police-like faces.

From my tests, it seems that the planets/asteroids that have a starport (or an orbiting station) are the ones in which throwing radioactive stuff will be detected and police will be coming after you, while those that have no starport or station are free radioactive dump

Too bad fuel is very expensive tough as even with radioactive dumping it's hard to make a profit with the starting ship and its small cargo when refueling+landing taxes is costly, so before dumping you really need to select the closest target (not always the same as planets move around the sun, so their distance can change and make travel more or less costly), by example when are on Mars the closest safe radioactive dump place is actually Mercury at the time you're starting to play. Then after jetisonning stuff from Mercury vicinity, the closest starport/station is one on Earth, don't go back to Mars as it will cost more fuel to get there.

It seems a Earth -> Mercury vicinity -> Earth travel takes +/- your ship 50% of its fuel capacity, so no need to refuel completely, just a bit above 50% and you can continue the dumping radioactive business

Now for optimisation, is there a need to go to a dumpster place vicinity or is there a minimum distance between a "protected" planet/asteroid and you being able to freely dump stuff somewhere mid-distance, i have no idea, but if you're not forced to go all the way to a planet it would mean less fuel to rebuy, more profit.

I was a bit disapointed to not find any trading between Sol and Barnard's Stars (the classic "starter" trader route of Elite 2 and 3 does not work in Pioneer, you lose money from it unfortunately) that actually give (even a small) profit, everything seems to make you lose money (when you add the cost of refuel/re-hydrogen for jumps/taxes) with the starting ship because of its too small cargo.
So i guess at first if you don't want to go the radioactive dumping stuff, you will need to focus on those bulletin board mission to actually get enough money so you can fetch a ship with a bigger cargo to NOT lose money in trading run, looks like some mission in the same system can provide some nice money (more than a radioactive dump run-refuel costs).

edit : oh yeah, do bulletin board cargo delivery mission within the same system you're in, it's a very good profitable way (even with counting on the refuel/taxes cost) with the starting ship, grinding this kind of missions should give you the money for better ship (and finally make profit on trading run).

edit 2 : also remember to save before doing any mission, the reason is that the autopilot managed to murder my ship 2 times in 2 different missions, don't fully trust it. Don't select to autodock from the other side of the system, select first to fly to vicinity/orbit to your target then ask for docking then autodock.

edit 3 : load your save seems buggy as it will grey every bulletin board mission in the station you save in, so leave the station and redock to it to refill the available missions

[EuchreJack]

Courier missions between systems seems the most profitable (at least it's the quickest).

For trading, its possible to swap the starter ship's Hyperdrive 3 with a Hyperdrive 1 and rip out the radar to free up cargo space, for those that want to trade and detest courier missions.

[ollobrains]

seems there is a bug with medical assistance missions that Is being pinned as an open coding awaiting a fix at the moment, I thought they weren't quite working as intended

[Robsoie]

Nice trick with selling the hyperdrive 3 for the version 1 , it really open the cargo space a lot , great for small trading jumps (as of course version 1 of hyperdrive allow only shorter jumps).

Meanwhile, after doing a delivery on Oasis City, located on Titan, i had such a nice view of nearby Saturn

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Then on a further mission i ran into something odd. While i was doing mission in system i never noticed it as it always had planets not too far (well relatively) from each other.
But when i got a delivery to do on Pluto research base (obviously located on Pluto), it showed a problem.

Basically when you space travel at max time acceleration it seems that when the travel distance is very large (and to travel to Pluto it is very large) after a while you'll see a micro sutter happen every couple of second, while normally everything is butter smooth.

Very strange, as it only happens during those very long range travels, and not at their start, but a bit before reaching mid-distance, and it will always happen from what i tested.
The same when i was still landed on that Pluto research base, just going full time acceleration without the ship moving exhibit this micro stutter every couple of seconds .

Oh well, felt a bit lonely to be thereon Pluto so far from everyone, so far from everyone that even scientists refuse to acknowledge Pluto is a planet, making it even more lonely though i was expecting the surface to be a bit more in the dark considering how far it is from the sun.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[ollobrains]

can concur with the microstutters , hopefully it gets fixed soon, nice screeshots btw

[zombat]

Can you manually plot your flight plan like kerbal yet, or is it still just a choice of autopilot or dying?

[Robsoie]

Some more on the micro stutter
When you trigger whatever will start it, it will be happening everytime at max acceleration time, even on short flight, even when landed somewhere.
But if you jump into another system, the micro stutter will stop, even if you jump back in the system you were in.

I don't play Kerbal so i don't know how flight planning work in it, but in current version of Pioneer you select a target (planet/station/city/floating object/system) from either the view (if you see the object) or from the star maps (if on mission you can even set the mission goal to be the target directly), it will be listed on the left of your central reticule.
You will then be able to right click on it and select to autopilot to there (vicinity, high orbit, low orbit) or ask for docking permission or autodock.

I found that selecting autodock is a bad idea though if you ship isn't yet in vicinity of the target, the autopilot killed my ship several time this way.

It is also possible to try to go travel to your destination manually instead of autopilot , but you'l obviously have to do yourself all the mid flight correction, and manage your reactor correctly to not overshoot or crash into your target.
What is unknown to me is if the autopilot do its best at fuel management or if you would do much better going manually.

edit :
While on a mission to another system, i first jumped on Barnard's Star (as with the class 1 hyperdrive i took , i can't jump to the other system directly, too far) and a couple of space cops ships were right nearby and scanned my cargo (fortunately for me nothing illegal in the system) .
Then as they were flying in stragith line, i used my good old Orbiter reflexes to actually try to get very close to them and match their direction to take a screenshot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's helped a lot by all the indications on the screen, as you can see the target ship vector, its prograde and retrograde pointer so you can match them better.
Though you need some very soft push on each directionnal reactor buttons when adjusting to not overshoot or collide

edit 2 : beware of the systems that actually contain multiple solar systems inside, because when you jump the game usually try to put you +/- in the middle of a system, but in the case of those special systems, it seems the game put you between all those solar system, so in the case i just got (in one of those Gliese with numbers named systems) my ship was at 75AU from any closest target.
And at max acceleration time it still take a lot of time to travel such distance.

[Trolldefender99]

apparently you need an actual joystick for this sim. Which makes sense, its a simulator. But a lot of (space) simulators have worked fine for me despite that. ELITE Dangerous works perfectly with my controller and that has a TON more buttons and things to keep track of. But my xbox one controller isn't (unless user error) working in this sim, even when I set deadpan much higher. Maybe deadpan 90 isn't high enough? Sounds high to me. The controls are wonky with the xbox controller, and my ship spins out of control. Also trying to set the controller controls in setting apparently bugs out because it keeps wanting to select one keybind and when I change it, it automatically goes back to the keybind it wants. Like it keeps wanting to go "left" on one of the triggers. Since apparently the controller isn't fully compatible or I'm being dumb.

On the plus side, I can spin out of the planet and can go fast and slow and control some movement...so it sorta works, besides the spinning thing and unable to fully set the buttons I want since it auto sets them all to the same exact button/trigger movement no matter what I choose.

Unless its user error...could be user error. I mean, the controller sorta works...besides the spinning thing and unable to set proper controls. That and I don't think the back triggers get detected and it doesn't seem the x/y/b/a buttons get detected either.

[Robsoie]

You can also play with mouse and keyboard without  a problem.
But when it comes to gamepads/xbox controllers i have no idea unfortunately, but apparently the devs in Pioneer seemed to have a hard time with controller support back in 2014 :
https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/pull/3237

As i have not followed development , it could explain your troubles

[Trolldefender99]

You can also play with mouse and keyboard without  a problem.
But when it comes to gamepads/xbox controllers i have no idea unfortunately, but apparently the devs in Pioneer seemed to have a hard time with controller support back in 2014 :
https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/pull/3237

As i have not followed development , it could explain your troubles

I had more issues with my keyboard than my controller. Maybe its a learn to play thing.

I couldn't seem to turn my ship or slow down or speed up. Just whatever auto pilot allowed me to do. Where as, at least my mostly not functioning controller at least allowed that even though it had the hilarious death spin to it. So when I was about to enter mercury (using keyboard), I would just smash right into the ground, none of my keybindings seemed to be working to slow down or speed up. I switched to my controller, and even with the death spin, I had a HUGE amount of control in speed and turning compared to my keyboard. So I didn't just smash into mercury, but theoretically if it wasn't for the hilarious spinning, I'd been able to land. But my controller death spin is the main issue I couldn't fix, but if it wasn't for that it been a ton better than my keyboard.

[ollobrains]

yeah the directional and speed controls need a lot of work that's for sure, once youre in space its a bit easier

[Robsoie]

There are 2 flight controls that you can switch by either clicking on the small icon that is to the right of the radar on the bottom or by pressing F5
The "Set Speed" and "Manual" modes
In Set Speed you set a speed by increasing it with Enter or decreasing it with Shift , and the ship will automatically keep that speed at all time in the direction you're currental having your ship on (so if you Set Speed to 0 , the ship will hoover without moving), if you change direction the ship will re-adjust its speed to match your Set Speed again in that direction.
Note that the speed change is not immediate , there's still acceleration/deceleration going on, so if you are flying at an insane set speed, if you want to stop at set speed 0 it will take time to reach that 0 speed
Probably the easiest flight mode and it's not very involving.

In Manual control it basically turn off the reactor, so you control absolutely everything manually with the reactors yourself (by default WASD for front left back and right reactors) , it's also good when you're doing some manoeuvre in space as you will float around your target more easily to where you want to be, and as the reactor aren't always on to adjust to a set speed it also mean you'll eat a lot less fuel.
So basically it's less easy than set speed but it's more involving (and a great way to crash if you don't pay attention)

In both mode R and F are the top and bottom reactors (so you can gain or lose height without changing the ship orientation)

edit : on some far system, i got a mission to save a landed ship that had lost its pilot, i had enough money (from a nice delivery run) to buy the required cabin to house the replacement pilot.
I took off, the other ship was on the other side of the planet from the city i was landed in, so after flying all the way there, i finally got close enough to the target so i could land i have the transfer happen automatically.
Once it was completed the other ship took off and left the zone, leaving me alone hoping the reward system will be rebalanced one day as that cabin was a very lot more costly than transfering the pilot awarded me

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

reaching the required distance with the landed ship :


After landing and waiting for the pilot transfer to happen, the other ship can be seen taking off.

[EuchreJack]

I have not had much luck with manual landing (as in I always crash).

As for the passenger compartment: You can use it again, or sell it for something like 2/3rds its purchase cost.  From what I've seen on the bulletin board, you need a few of them for passenger missions.