It is only idea :
Player may mark target everywhere on the map and computer draw way directly...
but... if you want go thru without ionstorms, you must go thru empty sectors and way is not direct... possibility to plan ways by the waypoints would very simplify traveling....

maybe on the nav map, shift clicking instead of normal clicking, so that way, you can just set up a set of nav points that you want to travel to, once you are done in your current sector.

I like this idea a lot. It would've come in really handy for me a number of times so far

I must admit I'm not to sure about this idea. I'm just as lazy as the next man (probably more so) and I've often wished I could set my destination and let the ship fly itself, especially between systems. It's just how would the ship’s navigational computer know where a given ion storm is? Yes, you could use the new weather reporting system as mentioned here http://www.vendetta-online.com/h/work.html, but I am guessing this system was intended for pilots to manually look up the weather reports before venturing out, and maybe the reports themselves are updated by pilots flying into the affected sectors, rather than an automated system. After all what’s the point in having ion storms if everybody knows where they are, even more so if the ship’s autopilot is able circumnavigate them.
You could set it so the ship’s navigational computer can avoid know asteroid fields and astral bodies, as this is where most of the ion storms are located and it will also avoid the long flight out of the asteroid field.
Having said all that, I personally would not favour an autopilot system of this nature Simply because it is to easy to set the autopilot and walk away leaving the ship to fend for itself. Even if it does not hit an ion storm (or other phenomena) it is still vulnerable when it reaches its destination.

Beowulf,

i think you misread the suggestion, he is asking for a way to manualy plot several waypoints by hand.

for example.... you set a jump path from j8 > j9 > j10 by clicking on j8 first, shift+left click on j9, shift+leftclick on j10. This will set up 3 waypoints as jump destinations one after the other.

you jump into j8, and once clear of a grav well, your nav computer will alreadt be set to jump to j9.... and so on.

I too would love to see this.

Yes I did miss-read the post. Sorry chekov, thanks Isorg. I think I got an idea stuck in my head and went off on one. Setting up a flight path and manually jumping from sector to sector is a great idea and something I would like to see.

Obviosuly the Ion Storms are there to create en element of chance that makes travelling moderately dangerous and gives local knowledge of sectors a little advantage to reward explorers.

An autopilot is maybe not such a bad idea, but such advanced equipment should be reserved for the truly wealthy and experienced. A nice reward if you say reach trade level 10? or maybe even higher.

A note system where you could stick comments to sectors would be great though. I woule love an in-game captains log/notebook kind of function. Could save some trees in the real world too! :))

@Original Post: Good idea

I was going to say "Search the forums, it's been suggested before" but then I had a hard time finding it. But find it I did:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/5885

It was pretty much ignored then, but maybe with some new support, it will be considered. =)

I know - bottom of the list of priorities.. I still say it would be nice. But now that a joystick button can open and close the nav menu, it's much easier to just plot courses as you go.

Edit:
-> Othmaar: Have you experienced many storms at all? They simply don't occur in open space, so in most systems, it is possible avoid storms 100% of the time by plotting courses around sectors with roids.

We already have system-to-system course plotting, so how different would it be to have in-system course plotting as well? The suggestion was never "give me an auto-pilot so I can always avoid storms without thinking" it's just "let me plot my own course that avoids storms, with the same ease as inter-system courses." Would it really change anything very much?