As ppattumi recently mentioned, the nominal teleport feature seems to be that one is able to teleport from ones home base to each of the last four previously visited planetary systems, as in the ones from which you teleported back to base.

Somehow, though, my installation has never been quite like that. For a while the teleportion list from the home base portal contained just two systems: the last site I teleported back from (call it "L") which updates as I return from successive locations, and one fixed site ("X") which was one of the first systems from which I teleported back to base.

At some point, magically, a third was added to the list ("Y") that was also one of the early systems. It stayed like that for a long, long time: L Y X. The L location would update; X and Y stayed constant, always the same two systems.

Then, when I wasn't paying attention, X was replaced by the home system ("H"). So now I'm stuck with L Y H. I can visit Y or H (the station right overhead) or return to the distant system L that's now closing in on the galactic center.

I suppose as long as L keeps updating so that I never lose progress towards the center then I can't really complain. I just don't understand why it behaves as it does and whether, and how, to enable tagging specific systems as places that would be useful to revisit. I've tried setting waypoints in the galactic map and in the planetary system list. Neither one had any affect on the teleporter.

Any ideas?

The teleport list of your space station is a rather complicated thing and not all reliable. It should work like this:

- up to 4 entries of your past visited systems should be in the list.
- When you teleport from a system back to your base, this system will be freshly added to the list.
- If 4 systems are already reached in the list, then any new system added will erase 1 of the 4 systems and be replaced.

It is not clear what system is replaced in the last point above, but the only way to make a system appear in the list is to teleport back to your base from it at least once. If you want to KEEP a system in the list, then you should teleport to it and then back to your base. Still this system isn't fool-proofed and I lost some systems. In this case you can still set a waypoint and fly there by hyperdriving.

Because I don't trust this system to be reliable, and for systems which I don't want to lose, I just use the cheat to note the system's galaxy adress and re-locate there later on if I wish. That way I also bypass the 4-system limit. For that, I edit and re-encrypt the savegame with nomanssave_v.1.1. tool.

No joy, I'm afraid. I must have something weird about my setup.

Hiengabork-Puk --> base [have Hiengabork-Puk, Qizhennuix VIII, Ahshyuelinni]
base --> Hiengabork-Puk
Hiengabork-Puk --> base [have Hiengabork-Puk, Qizhennuix VIII, Ahshyuelinni]
base --> Hiengabork-Puk <warp> Onakamatsuk-Kuj
Onakamatsuk-Kuj --> base [have Onakamatsuk-Kuj, Qizhennuix VIII, Ahshyuelinni]

So for some reason I'm only getting three total, one of which is the most recent distant system and two of which are more or less persistent: Q VIII and Ahsh.

Oh, well. As long as the distant system stays available...

And, how did the auto-generated name Hiengabork-Puk get past the smut filter? ;-)

To the best of my knowledge, it works like this:

When you teleport from any space station to your home base, the station is added to your teleport list. If there are already four stations on your teleport list, the oldest one is pushed off, and the remaining three are pushed down, with the most recent station added to the top.

When you teleport from your home base to any station, that station is REMOVED from your teleport list. The way to get it back is to just teleport back from the station to your home base again, and it will be added to the top of the list. That's why the station you most recently visited is always on the top of the list, no matter how far away it is in your exploration..

What happened in your example is: When you teleported from Hiengabork-Puk to your base, it got added to the top of the list. Since you only had two other stations, nothing got lost. When you teleported from your base back to Hiengabork-Puk, it was removed from the list. Then, you warped from the station to a new star and back to your base. Since Hiengabork-Puk was deleted before you warped, it's not on your list any more, and Onakamatsuk-Kuj is now at the top.

If you had wanted to keep Hiengabork-Puk and add Onakamatsuk-Kuj as a fourth entry, you would have had to launch from the surface of your home planet, and then warped directly to Onakamasuk-Kuj from there. If you had teleported to Qizhennuix VIII first before warping to Onakamasuk-Kuj and teleporting back, your list would be:

Onakamasuk-Kuj, Hiengabork-Puk, Ahshyuelinni

Qizhennuix VIII would have been deleted the moment you teleported, then you warp to the new system and teleport back, the two remaining systems would have been pushed down and the new system is added to the top.

That's not true in my game:

My exploration road is usually:
I always make a maximum warp from the last system I have explored. Then if I like to keep a newly visited system, I will simply teleport to my base and then back. It will then stay in the list. You are saying it will then be deleted, but that's not the case in my game.
If I don't like a system I just won't teleport back to my base from it so it will not get in the list.

Problems arise if I deviate from this exploration road, e.g. by teleporting to system nr. 2 and then warping etc.
Problem is I cannot forsee WHICH system will be deleted once I have 4 systems in the list and one gets replaced. It should be the oldest one, but if I change slightly my exploration road this is not the case, I may lose a new one. (That's the reason I keep track of them in a log file).

I don't know why they made such a complex system. It should be like that: The player can simply chose 4 systems for teleporting to his liking among those he has already visited and the list will stay like that if player doesn't change it.
Also the player defined system names should appear in the list.
I still don't get how they screwed it up exactly and still I may be wrong in understanding it. I only hope they change that soon to be more clear and logical.

The teleporter works predictably for me. Mostly, I agree with what Toccatta posted. Whenever you teleport from a distant system to your base, that distant system is added to the top of your list. If there is already four entries, the bottom one is dropped. They are always in the order they were most recently teleported in from.
Now here is the tricky bit. As Toccatta said, when you teleport back to any of the locations on the list. it is then removed from the list. Teleporting from it to your base again puts it back - but then you remove it again if you teleport back to it. The only way to get a system to stay on the list is to teleport from it to your base, then not teleport back to it. If you are moving bases, it is easy to get your old base on the list. Before moving, fly out to the space station. Teleport from there back to your base. Your base system is now the top entry on the teleport list. Travel to your new base and do the transfer. Travel onwards. Now, if later on you want to visit your old base, you will first return from Wherever to your new base. Wherever will now be the top entry in your teleporter list and your old base the second. Teleport to your old base - it is now removed from your list. But when you travel on, you teleport from old base to new base in order to return from new base to Wherever, and Voila! Old base is back on the list. It will stay there as long as you always teleport back from it to your current base after you visit.

You can repeat this process three times; the teleport list carries over when you change bases. The fourth space is needed for the "frontline" system you return from to your base. If you want to swap in a new permanent entry, you must drop one. It will be the bottom one on the list. If the one you want to drop is not on the bottom, quickly teleport to and from those below it, and they will move to the top. Now you add your new entry, by flying to it and teleporting back from it The new entry is now at the top and the one to be dropped is fourth. You travel on. Next time you teleport back to your base from Further Out, Further Out becomes the top entry in your list, the new entry moves to second, and your old three entries become 3, 4 and 5. The fifth entry is dropped. When you teleport back to Further Out, it is removed from the list, so the list will again have three entries.

Because of Toccate and pgrace last answers, I have re-checked the whole teleporting thing. And I was totally wrong in my posts above, I just lost my recent interesting system because I teleported to homebase and back and then warped away from it in a new system and then teleported to base to complete other quests. My past system is just gone, that's really weird and uncomfortable.

Question is then, if I explore and find a system I want to keep, which I want to re-visit often, how do I proceed? This will be very difficult because the only solution is to NOT teleport to it. Alas my homebase is located at the other side of the galaxy, so I cannot just warp back to a system I want to keep :((

I have done Toccatta's advice and it works. This brings me to a more simple idea which is: Exploring by Clusters of stars instad of warping maximal distance. A cluster is a group of nearby stars within a reasonable warp range - say 1600 LJ which is the combined Sigma/Tau/Theta warp reactur setup.

I will then have to set my new base in this cluster. Then I start to explore the cluster. Found System A you like? Teleport to base and hyperdrive from there to a new star in the cluster. Find System B you like? Same, teleport to base and hyperdrive to another star within the cluster. You can repeat 2 more times to fill the teleport list with 4 systems in your cluster, and should you lose one then simply hyperdrive to it.
I will do this, plus I will simply make sure that 1 entry of my list will be my 'current progress' which can be very far away from my 'cluster', currently my progress is on the other side of the galaxy nearer to the center. I just have to be damn careful to keep this progress slot active in the list without overwriting it. This should not be that difficult because telporting to my base from my progress point will freshly save it in the list on the top; IF IT'S ON LAST POSITION then it's time to telport there and back to make it back to the top of the list.

Complicated all this! I wish I could simply chose 4 systems to be saved in the teleporter, and if I remove one then I will not be able to add it again (as a restriction, because the devs seem to be very pointy to make a teleporter with restrictions).

I think that Toccatta's explanation fits the observed behavior. Which is unfortunate.

Presumably our intrepid avatar, The Traveler, knows the galactic coordinates of systems that have been visited. It would have been nice if one could tag, say, up to three systems on the Recent Discoveries list as teleportation targets. Given that my current frontline location is about 150000 LY from home base, adding new entries by the waypoint-teleport-warp to waypoint method is pretty much out of the question, even with a nominal 1618 LY jump range (which usually equates to less than half of that in a straight line from source to destination).

Maybe in the next update? ;-)