So I'm currently working on a mod that contains some of these suggestions. Particularly, it'll include
- An "Abort after X minutes" checkbox for buying/selling (see screenshot)
- A menu for editing command chains (see other screenshot)
However, modifying the command chain is actually a bit more complicated, because you need to think about how you could possibly edit a jump order.
See, editing a buy/sell order is easy. You can just edit some values (or remove them entirely), because no other command after that directly depends on it, i.e. removing a "Refine" order will not influence a "Sell" order afterwards. But deleting a jump order could possibly mean that your ship cannot execute the jump after that, because it's too far away.
I'll show you some possibilities I've thought of to handle this in an example:
Original order: A>>>B>>>C>>>D
These are jumps through sectors A, B, C, D and in the last sector we want to buy something. Now we want to remove/edit the jump to B
1st Possibility - Just jump from A>>>C:
Only possible if C is in range of A. Otherwise, we have a gap.
2nd Possibility - Don't remove the jump to B, just make a jump less. So A>>>B>>>C.
Easy to implement, but rarely something you want, unless you wanted to buy the goods in "C" in the first place.
3rd Possibility - Let the player create a new path:
The player has to create a new path with the restriction that it should start at A and end at C.
E.g. A>>>J>>>K>>>L>>>C>>>D, whereas J,K,L are chosen by the player. That's what I'm currently planning to do.
4th Possibility - Automatic path creation:
Like the 3rd one, but automatic. Would be a nice gimmick, but will just create the same path anyway if you have used automatic path creation for the original route.
Tell me if you have more ideas about that or the mod in general. The following features I also consider to implement:
- Saving and loading command chains
- undo/redo (unsure, because tricky on the technical side)
- reassign the command chain to another craft
- pausing the command chain
Because it's less complicated. Maybe I'll modify that too when I'm done with the other stuff.