[zircher]

Heh, there's danger and then there's careless (on the auto-explorer's part.) Hitting an unknown danger like when coming out of a forest or turning a corner in a cave is one thing. Hitting a clearly discovered acid river or black hole multiple times just because it is the shortest path is... painful. I'm not sure what causes the auto-asphyxiation glitch, I think is happens only in caves where it goes off exploring instead of returning to the cave exit.

One way to code it is to build the danger map on the fly as you're exploring. So, unknown is still unknown. You don't have to save the danger map even. Every time you land, just scan the existing map, check what gear is equipped, and mark damaging locations as off limits (or causes a full stop) for auto-explore. If you want loot or to travel through damaging squares, you would have to do it manually. [Which means that you can't auto explore a 100% damaging location like a high G world. You have to do it manually.]

Also, mark plants as dangerous terrain until destroyed so you can auto-avoid them after finding them. This is needed since some plants are surrounded by terrain that blocks LOS and thus the normal danger logic of stopping does not activate in time.

The game does work as is, but trusting your life to auto-explore is pretty risky depending on the location and atmosphere of the planet/wreck.