Docking Clamps!

[Strange]

I've seen this idea mentioned a couple places, but not really expounded upon. So...

DOCKING CLAMPS.

The current docking system is:
1) Awkward,
2) Ugly,
3) Inflexible,
and is actually limiting creativity. For instance, let's say I want to make a station. Alright, all good. Now I make a destroyer. Yup, we're on the same page. Now I want to dock my destorsjfdon NO BECAUSE IT'S IMPOSSIBLE. The current docking enhancer system requires the station to have dimensions that are at least close to equal to those of your ship, and for all ships to dock the same way, and for you to stick an ugly, 3-axis system of enhancers somewhere deep within the unreachable bowels of your station (And that's not even touching on the dock requiring a giant box to be completely clear of obstructions). The (A) reason I like StarMade is because it doesn't require hardly anything in terms of ship design - IMO, the less requirements you can have while not completely breaking the game, the better. After all, it's a sandbox game.

So, what are docking clamps, and why are they better? Docking clamps are simple, easy to use blocks that attach to each other. That's it. Once they're attached, the ship and the station, or the ship and the ship, attach. You could arrange them in a circle around a space-tunnel like at an airport, or use a single one to carry micro-fighters under the wings. This would allow for:
1) Asymmetric ships!
2) Titans docking with each other!
3) Easy to access, easy to launch escape pods!
4) Large ships docking at smallish stations!
5) No more dumb-looking docking beams!
6) And so much more!
But how will you undock? Simple - integrate the clamps with the new logic system. BOOM. Imagine, once you dock, the plexdoors automatically open. Hit an activator, and your shuttle is ejected into space. The possibilities are endless - which is as it should be.

The idea isn't perfect: for instance, side facing cockpits that actually worked would be great for docking, and huge ships would still be hard. Perhaps the clamps could pull towards each other. And having moving parts on the ships would also make this way cooler, allowing you to make docking ports that extend outward, or retract for travel and combat. But still, docking right now is so ugly that almost anything would be better.

It is totally possible, of course, that I'm missing something huge - like "That will be abused for XXX and YYY trolling and griefing! 12-year-olds the world round will send prayers of gratitude to their heathen gods the moment this is released!" But I reeeeeaaaalllly want this to happen. Or anything, for that matter. Docking sucks, and it doesn't have to. So if there are any glaring problems, tell me, but also if there are any ways this idea could be EVEN MORE AWESOME, tell me then, too.

 

[Doomerzzz]

Hmm this is a good idea, though for fairness it has to remain exclusive to stations and stationary bases, unless there are size limitations included for ships. You dont want a titan to carry 4 other titans around and just be unstoppable and lagg the hell out of the game haha.
Though I guess not small ships since they usually belong in a hanger unless you have an aircraft carrier style ship in which case would be good to use.

This idea is perfect for station docking though, you could make clamps that can hold your ship in place at your station for your titans and capitals. Not too sure about undocking, could perhaps lower your ship and the clamps automatically detach when start accelerating to a certain amount?

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Docking enhancers is a balancing system, needing to have large stations to dock large ships stops people from docking invincible monsters to faction home bases. You also don't need to have the station be as big as the ship you are docking as each enhancer extends a dock two meters. It all comes down to smart planning.

This is the station I am building, I designed it in a way that the main dock on top can hold a massive ship. The enhancers run most of the height and the entire length of the station so it can easily dock every large ship I've built to date. (Excluding the shipyard which was also designed to dock all my largest ships)

The current docking system is very simple and easy to use, it doesn't take lining up blocks in order to dock. Yes it could do with some more flexibility but that is not the issue here. If you plan your ships right, ships that are meant to dock and those that will hold ships it shouldn't be a problem.

Now, I do support this idea but I disagree with most of these arguments for it. I think it would be a great additional docking mechanic not a complete replacement. I would love to be able to create docking arms that mate up with my larger ships. I always have airlocks that would make great docking ports on my ships.

 

[Ithirahad]

The way I feel, anything should be able to dock to anything else of any size really... but home stations shouldn't grant docked ships and turrets magical instant invulnerability, they should just share shields.

 

[Boba_Fett]

I like the idea, but Ithirahad and Sven_The_Slayer are right, there needs to be someway to keep ridiculous ships from becoming invincible so easy. That being said, there will likely be a change to how faction bases/faction points/invincible docking works yet anyways. Either way, the idea is good, do you know how hard it is to make the Slave I dock and look good while doing it? (key point, it flies differently than it lands)

 

[Lecic]

I think the best solution would be to make dock extenders mass based instead of dimension based. Then, dimensions of the ship aren't as important, obstructions are no longer a problem, and it gives a slight nerf to cube ships, as they lose the advantage of being able to easily fit in docks because of compact dimensions.

 

[Strange]

Sven_The_Slayer Okay, so I probably exaggerated the evils of enhancers. I still don't like them at all, but then, to each his own. I definitely do not want people to be able to invincible-ize their motherships in the middle of a battle. (In all honesty, I'm not a huge fan of invincible faction homes at all, but I realize that there needs to be some protection for people while they're offline.) I think it would be cool to see something like Ithirahad mentioned, where the station could be 'denuded', but not actually destroyed. That, or something like Lecic said, with mass-based limits instead of dimension-based.

Actual, balanced docking clamps are probably not going to be possible for a while, simply because there's so much else that needs to be balanced. If you plan out your station ahead of time to be able to dock anything, that's great. It'll look good, and work. But you can't add that functionality later. Maybe it's just because I'm not a very good planner, but I tend to change my design a little as I get a feel for what I'm working on. If I get three-quarters of the way through building a ship, and decide "wait, what if I put a big turret here?", I'll have to rework the interior and make room for the enhancers.

The other thing I don't like about the current docking system is that it limits your docking point to the core. Now, again, you can plan and work around that, but it's just another limitation. What if I'm building an escape pod, and want to dock it from the back pointing down out of the bottom of the ship? I could eventually make something that looks like this with the current system, but it would be easier to build and to understand if I could just use clamps.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I don't really like just having a mass based system over the current bounding box. With the bounding box you know exactly how big the docks are and do not have to worry about clipping issues as much. It's not hard to figure out how big a ships required docking size is, and in fact I rate my turrets based on the exact dimensions of the enhancers they need to dock. Ships meant to dock are given the same considerations. I do think the system could be improved though. If it auto adjusted the bounding box based on collisions instead of just turning it off most of the docking issues would be fixed. You could have docks that are irregular sizes including those smaller than 7x7x7.

As for docking with clamps clipping wouldn't be an issue because you would actually have to mate the two docking ports in order to dock. This could take quite a bit of piloting skill to do in some cases. I could see some kind of mass based enhancer system implemented to "balance" it at least on stations. Ship to ship mating wouldn't be an issue because the mother ship would still be required to carry the weight of all of it's children.

I really do want both systems. I would rather not have to worry about clamps on smaller ships but it is infinitely valuable for anything larger than a fighter.

 

[psteiner]

Great idea, but one question... would you have to have clamps on 2 sides for "pressure", or would the clamp just firmly attach to a ship, only requiring one clamp per ship. Because you have to have a mass relative system, or proportion looks funny. How about a 1 clamp block per average value of 10 XYZ dimensions. Or something like that...

 

[Ithirahad]

Great idea, but one question... would you have to have clamps on 2 sides for "pressure", or would the clamp just firmly attach to a ship, only requiring one clamp per ship. Because you have to have a mass relative system, or proportion looks funny. How about a 1 clamp block per average value of 10 XYZ dimensions. Or something like that...

Clamps would have to 'mate' with each other, and I'd think that the larger a ship gets, the more clamps would be needed to preserve a solid connection. The way I see it, a certain amount of clamps for your mass would give you a solid lock onto whatever you're docked to. Decrease the amount of clamps, and it becomes easier and easier for someone to bump into and detach you. (Your ship would stick, but not very well).

 

[Elladan]

I might be wrong but during the first stages of developpement, docking had been considered in different ways. One of them was the possibility of creating solid links ( a docking block stays in contact with the linked docking block when activated ) which would have enabled to have 1 link for 1 axis restriction ( turrets ), 2 links for 2 axis restriction ( rotating objects like station rings ) and 3 links for docking.
However, Schema liked it but it wasn't applied to the game probably because of the performance cost implied.

So it believe that reworking the docking in such a different way would only slow the developpement process. According to me, it's a feature that we can try to make better but we can't change the way it works completly for developpers have way more important features to go over.

So yes, it's not a bad idea, it offers nice possibilities over the actual ones but there are other factors we can't see to take in consideration and the fact that when you go one way, you can't go back all the time or you won't go forward.

 

[Ithirahad]

I might be wrong but during the first stages of developpement, docking had been considered in different ways. One of them was the possibility of creating solid links ( a docking block stays in contact with the linked docking block when activated ) which would have enabled to have 1 link for 1 axis restriction ( turrets ), 2 links for 2 axis restriction ( rotating objects like station rings ) and 3 links for docking.
However, Schema liked it but it wasn't applied to the game probably because of the performance cost implied.

I find it hard to believe that that would effect performance that much... If things like that hurt performance, then this game probably shouldn't continue development until computers can handle that stuff, or Schema could just put a configurable size limit on docked objects. I've already had enough of technical limitations seemingly preventing what seem to be completely normal things from being implemented. (Pistons being another good example)

 

[Elladan]

Okay so for exemple, you have to compute collisions with clamps, you have to verify that the ship can dock at the position which mean computing both the position size and the ship size. Since it's not square, you have to take the shape in account also probably. Then, depending on the number of clamps there is stability/rotation.

Then you have to know that dividing and multiplying takes about 20 to 40 more time than adding or substracting. That collision is probably using "FLOATS" which computations are about 100 to 1000 slower than "INT" computations. ( That's why collisions of giant ships are bad for servers )

AND the game is programmed in JAVA which is a language that isn't granting as much performances as C++/C that are used by the video games studios that produces massive games. ( C/C++ takes a lot more time to program than JAVA ).

So yes, Schema is probably taking a lot of time to add features without hurting performances because it's not as simple as it seems. And what might seem is slight difference usually mean doing things a very different way that might not be that great.

So it's quite simple to believe how performances can be affected ...

And by the way, computers can easily handle that stuff but not all and I find it really open-minded not to limit the possibility of playing the game to just a small percentages of computers. ( I assume that half of the players have a laptop valued at less than 1000 euros/dollars/whatever )
You can always change graphic settings but you can't enable/disable such features at will.

 

[Strange]

I agree, performance is a very important consideration. My idea was that the ship wouldn't be able to dock until its docking clamps physically touched the other ones. Then, no new ship-measuring systems need to be added. If they touch, they touch. If they don't, they don't. Simple. In theory.

I like the idea of more clamps needed for larger mass ships. It adds a little extra balance.

I don't think a titan carrying four more titans will be much of a problem. The master titan will have to carry five times it's mass with the same amount of thrust - it's not going anywhere fast.

Most likely, this system would end up having two types of clamps. A 'master' type, and a 'slave' type. They can connect to opposite types, but not same types (no master to master). This would be basically the same as the current system: one would be able to move, the other would be stuck on to it. There might need to be some sort of balance for larger ships. It could be awkward to dock large ships, especially without side-facing cameras (maybe have a docking computer that would give you a third-person view of your ship and fine-grain controls?). There could be issues with ships kind-of-fitting-but-not-really, where they start glitching and spazzing out.

And, of course, there's the whole transfer of station invincibility thing.

 

[psteiner]

Honestly, I think that the hardest part of this would be the orientation when docking, because what if the docking clamps are misaligned.

 

[Ithirahad]

Okay so for exemple, you have to compute collisions with clamps, you have to verify that the ship can dock at the position which mean computing both the position size and the ship size. Since it's not square, you have to take the shape in account also probably. Then, depending on the number of clamps there is stability/rotation.

You don't need to verify whether or not it can dock at all... If your ship's docking tube or whatever can't fit somewhere, the clamps can't touch those on what you're docking to so there's no need for fancy area calculations. "Cheating" by ramming into things at high speed might happen, but shouldn't be a huge issues at normal sizes.

Stability doesn't need to be fancy either, really. You just have to take the force of a collision (which the physics engine needs to have for momentum transfer anyway, right?)

Then you have to know that dividing and multiplying takes about 20 to 40 more time than adding or substracting. That collision is probably using "FLOATS" which computations are about 100 to 1000 slower than "INT" computations. ( That's why collisions of giant ships are bad for servers )

Good to know, but is the difference in calculation speeds between float variables and integer variables relevant at all? Integers don't have anything to do with what we're talking about here, and I don't know how fast integers calculate, so...

So yes, Schema is probably taking a lot of time to add features without hurting performances because it's not as simple as it seems. And what might seem is slight difference usually mean doing things a very different way that might not be that great.

So it's quite simple to believe how performances can be affected ...

And by the way, computers can easily handle that stuff but not all and I find it really open-minded not to limit the possibility of playing the game to just a small percentages of computers. ( I assume that half of the players have a laptop valued at less than 1000 euros/dollars/whatever )
You can always change graphic settings but you can't enable/disable such features at will.

Yeah, I understand. I'm not being critical of Schema, really; I see that he's doing the best that he can.

Most likely, this system would end up having two types of clamps. A 'master' type, and a 'slave' type. They can connect to opposite types, but not same types (no master to master). This would be basically the same as the current system: one would be able to move, the other would be stuck on to it.

Yeah, probably... But that would mean that two equally-sized ships couldn't attach their docking tubes together to transfer people or whatever.

There might need to be some sort of balance for larger ships. It could be awkward to dock large ships, especially without side-facing cameras (maybe have a docking computer that would give you a third-person view of your ship and fine-grain controls?). There could be issues with ships kind-of-fitting-but-not-really, where they start glitching and spazzing out.

Not really. If someone 'cheats' and rams docking clamps together through other blocks, the ships will just lock together and won't spaz, and when they undock, they -should- just launch away from one another at high speed.

 

[psteiner]

Say, what texture would be used for this?

 

[Darth Cestual]

Say, what texture would be used for this?

I've been envisioning the docking clamp idea as something akin to plexdoors. line the clamps up like a docking module, the ships automatically align like a turret or regularly docked ship now, and a plexdoor tube would extend between the 2 ships/station & ships docking clamp blocks that would be placed about the airlock. So, they could just recolor the plexdoors into plexdocks.

 

[Ithirahad]

Say, what texture would be used for this?

I'd envision the docking clamps to be a completely new model... something really simple. Heck, they could even just be little gray cuboid "nubs" that stick up from the surface you place them on and couple with other nubs... Sorta like magnets.

 

[mrsinister]

isn't that why they designed the server.cfg so you could turn off docking requirements? so, if you wanted to use 1 block you can ,no matter the size of the ship? I must say though, a docking magnet/clamp type block does sound pretty interesting.