Built in auto pilot as a tool for both players and QA?

[CiberX15]

So one of the most popular mods of the original KSP was the Mech Jeb autopilot mod. And certainly there are attempts to build such a mod for KSP 2 in the works. 

However, reading through the dev diaries, and remembering my own experiences working in quality assurance, the thought comes to me that it would be useful for the devs to be able to deterministically run the same tests over and over again.

Automation.

Officially build an auto pilot into the game so the QA team doesn’t have to manually run through the same test 300 times and instead can spend their time and experience trying to break things in new and exciting ways, or continue playing detective on the bugs that have not yielded their culprits yet.

And… if you are going to build such tools anyway, wouldn’t it be nice to just build it directly into the game, since it would be equally enjoyed by players who have gotten bored of Kerbin orbit missions?

Of course once science comes along you could lock such tools behind certain milestones so that players can only start automating their way out of things if they have already proven that they can do the thing. Etc. Must make it to orbit 3 times to unlock orbit assist automation etc.
 

[The Aziz]

Oh I bet the QA team has enough internal dev tools to not be bothered with spending hours to get into a specific situation. They just aren't available in release builds.

[DigitalEva]

I have to wonder why an autopilot of any kind isn't in the game (Probe cores not withstanding). I'm more on the end of "build the flying tube and send it", so autopilot, like MechJeb in KSP1, is a wonderful tool for me

[CiberX15]

On 6/12/2023 at 12:58 PM, DigitalEva said:

I'm more on the end of "build the flying tube and send it", so autopilot, like MechJeb in KSP1, is a wonderful tool for me

Well and to me it also extends the game's playability and re-playability. Like the first time playing the original KSP I did all manual launches earned my science and enjoyed it. But my second time though it was like. Ok I've done all this before. There are new places to go and new parts to use, but the initial orbital launch, as well as some of the planetary transfers were now old news. And it got so tedious doing the same launch over and over again that I'd get bored of the game before I got to play with any of the new stuff. Hence why MechJeb became a critical part of my original KSP experience. 
 

I suppose some of the new features like bases may reduce the tedium, since you could launch from wherever you managed to set up a base. But that's still a long ways off, and even once it exists the point remains valid for new play throughs.