Well now a different problem, I lost connection to the target so I re-enabled rotate to target so now I only have a few hours to the destination and the ship is accelerating.  However the distance to target is increasing (now at 3.20 Mly) and so is the arrival time (it went from 3 hours to 4.2 hours) what's going on?

No idea. Never seen that happen in 980, and I haven't done any inter-galactic flights in 990.

And as far as I've seen., when using the warp autopilot, the main engines are never on when in warp (unless I turn them on). Maybe something new with 990.

With the warp autopilot, all you have to do is select the target, click on "Warp to target". SE will take care of the vectors and velocity. Are you not doing that?

As you can see, I'm still pointed to the target and the speed is still accelerating but I'm also getting further from the target....huh?

No idea. Never seen that happen in 980, and I haven't done any inter-galactic flights in 990.

And as far as I've seen., when using the warp autopilot, the main engines are never on when in warp (unless I turn them on). Maybe something new with 990.

With the warp autopilot, all you have to do is select the target, click on "Warp to target". SE will take care of the vectors and velocity. Are you not doing that?

I did but I got "field unstable" etc error a couple of times and had to rotate to target again.  It was working for awhile but you see whats going on this morning, the distance to the target is actually increasing even though it says I'm facing the target and speed is accelerating.

I can't tell from that, did I actually speed past the target?  It doesn't seem like it because I actually never got to the target lol.

I'm not too familiar with all the ins and outs of the warp drive with 990. I did just try a quick trip though. Completely on autopilot, only about 52 light years or so.

One thing to keep in mind, the efficiency of the warp drive depends on the direction you are pointing relative to your real space velocity vector, not your target. If the nose of your ship veers away from your velocity vector, the efficiency begins to drop off drastically, and your effective velocity through hyperspace falls off. Before you reach 90 degrees off-axis, your efficiency will have already dropped to zero.  SE 990 gives a message near the top of the screen about that. It says to rotate towards your target, but it should say towards the velocity vector. However, that velocity vector should be on your target if you actually want to get there any time soon.

Oddly enough, I noticed as I kept the ship rotating, the efficiency and speed climbed back up as I pointed 180 degrees from my target. That was interesting...

Your velocity vector is nowhere near your target. What I would do — turn off the autopilot, all engines should shut down. Make sure you still have your target selected, then click on warp-to-target. SE will turn your ship in a particular direction, then fire up the main engine. It will be moving the velocity vector back to your target. When that is done, the main engines will shut down, your ship will turn towards your target, and then the warp drive will engage.  Feel free to mess with the main engines again after that.

I don't do any long distance warp travel (nor much space flight in 990 these days (the lighting is beautiful, though)), I'm pretty much a let-the-autopilot-fly-the-warp-travel kind'a guy. I'll take over when it's time to put it in orbit, or fly to the surface. Or ship-to-ship docking...

Maybe time for Canleskis to take over again, he seems more versed in hands-on warp travel.

I'm not too familiar with all the ins and outs of the warp drive with 990. I did just try a quick trip though. Completely on autopilot, only about 52 light years or so.

One thing to keep in mind, the efficiency of the warp drive depends on the direction you are pointing relative to your real space velocity vector, not your target. If the nose of your ship veers away from your velocity vector, the efficiency begins to drop off drastically, and your effective velocity through hyperspace falls off. Before you reach 90 degrees off-axis, your efficiency will have already dropped to zero.  SE 990 gives a message near the top of the screen about that. It says to rotate towards your target, but it should say towards the velocity vector. However, that velocity vector should be on your target if you actually want to get there any time soon.

Oddly enough, I noticed as I kept the ship rotating, the efficiency and speed climbed back up as I pointed 180 degrees from my target. That was interesting...

I don't do any long distance warp travel (nor much space flight in 990 these days (the lighting is beautiful, though)), I'm pretty much a let-the-autopilot-fly-the-warp-travel kind'a guy. I'll take over when it's time to put it in orbit, or fly to the surface. Or ship-to-ship docking...

Maybe time for Canleskis to take over again, he seems more versed in hands-on warp travel.

Thats interesting about efficiency....I did notice it dropped to 73% at one point but was back up at 100% after I rotated this morning.
As you can see from my screenshots, my velocity vector and target are one and the same aren't they?  Otherwise I don't know how to rotate towards the velocity vector, there is no option to do that.
Latest screenshot.  Twice as far away from the target as when I first started lol. Maybe it thinks the universe is circular and I'll get there by going in the opposite direction lol.

As you can see from my screenshots, my velocity vector and target are one and the same aren't they?  Otherwise I don't know how to rotate towards the velocity vector, there is no option to do that.

The red marker points to your target. It appears to be off screen on the port side.

Blue marker is your velocity vector, purple marker is your warp vector. You need to align the velocity vector with the target marker.

Try what I suggested in the fourth paragraph above. (You may want to use the time warp in this case, SE may try and slow you down from nearly 6,000 km/sec to 10km/sec. Maybe. But that might take awhile with 12.2g engines.)

Edit: Actually, looking back on your previous screens, it looks like you never did align the velocity vector with the target. So you blew right past it! :o

Yeah I just did Rotate to Target and thought thats all I needed to do as per HUD instructions.  Is this some sort of bug in SE lol.  Okay I'm doing  a new one and it still seems to be misaligned, so I'm going to follow your advice, but I need to know if it's really misaligned in this voyage to the Andromeda galaxy because the distance to M31 seems to be getting less just like it was before, but we know how that voyage turned out lol.  Should I follow the below instructions right now or wait until the distance to target starts increasing?

Your velocity vector is nowhere near your target. What I would do — turn off the autopilot, all engines should shut down. Make sure you still have your target selected, then click on warp-to-target. SE will turn your ship in a particular direction, then fire up the main engine. It will be moving the velocity vector back to your target. When that is done, the main engines will shut down, your ship will turn towards your target, and then the warp drive will engage.  Feel free to mess with the main engines again after that.

Here is the screen capture- trip was started 2 hours ago

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the confusing part is that I see two targets overlapping that makes me think I'm headed in the right direction but then there's that red arrowhead pointing to the lower left lol

I don't know how to shut off autopilot.  I just pressed Aircraft mode and I think that shut my engines off.  I also dont have a warp to target.  What I did was rotate off target and rotate back on target.  Now I have the pink, purple and turquoise targets all overlapping. But the red arrowhead still points towards the bottom right.  Cant I just manually move the screen around with the arrow keys or numpad until they are all lined up?

I did all this because my connection to the target had broken off again and reconnected and the arrowhead went from lower left to lower right and the distance to the target started to increase again so I sensed I had just passed it.

this is before I turn the engines back on

I decided to dang it all and use an entirely different method.  I used the lower left console to center object, just like we do in Planetarium mode.  That should work.

Okay I made some changes manually.  I hope this does it.  For some odd reason hyperjump selects retrograde so centering the target probably wouldn't work since I'd be going in the opposite direction.  So I manually selected prograde.  That flipped the view around so I went back to the lower left console and used it to recenter M31.  I hope this means it will finally work because now time to destination is finally decreasing again, yay!

This has to be some bug in Sim mode, because otherwise it's completely illogical.  So centering the target manually doesn't actually move the ship to the target (why not? that would be the logical way to do it.)  So what I did was manually center M31 while I was in the cockpit and that was fairly easy to do.