Station Docker Block

[Edymnion]

We currently have the Rail Docker block. The block that lets you hook onto rails, where the entity you are in becomes docked to whatever you were docking to. Pretty straighforwards.

But what if we flip that relationship 180 degrees for a Station Docker block, where whatever you hit with the docking beam becomes docked to you, instead of the other way around?

Benefits I can think of off the top of my head:

• Station keepers could fire the beams at ships wanting to dock, meaning larger ships could worry less about rail docker placement and place their airlocks where it made sense, as opposed to where it was easy to shoot the docking beam out from.
• Turret docking. If the mother ship fired the beam to snag a turret instead of the other way around, you could spawn turrets and take the ship to them when they pop into existance a bloody mile away instead of having to equip them thrusters just to take them off again.
• Drone retrieval. Right now drones are a thing, but its easier to abandon or destroy them than it is to try and recover them all. If the drone carrier had a docking beam that could suck the drone back into it's bay without having to leave the main ship, drone maintenance suddenly becomes much more viable.

I should think it wouldn't be too hard to do, seeing as how we already have rail dockers. Perhaps just a matter of flipping the "this is the master, this is the slave" flags around? Dunno how exactly that was coded...

 

[Ixalite]

Sounds like something that can be abused maliciously in combat.

 

[Tunk]

Possibly, perhaps only allow it to work if the docker has enough enhancers for the target and implement faction permissions?
Should stop grapple drones and prevent combat snagging.

 

[cyberus111]

Or simply make it a faction only tool

 

[Edymnion]

Sounds like something that can be abused maliciously in combat.

How many times have you maliciously docked a warhead to someone's hull in combat?

If the rules for rail docking blocks and faction lockout/permissions stay the same, I see no combat potential at all in it.

 

[Sgtwisky]

Would LOVE to see this functionality. If we could "Link" multiple rails to the same beam for auto assignment of docks to what your trying to "catch" it would be even better. For example if you have a carrier that holds say 10 drones. You could add 10 rail blocks to a group, which when you fired the beam, it would check to see which was empty, then do a check to see if the ship fits. If yes, dock there. If no, move to next dock in group. If no docks remain, do not dock. You could create a group by using C on the "Mother ship docker" (or what ever you want to call it) and V on the select rail blocks for it to use.

Think this would make the quality of life of us carrier pilots much MUCH easier. not sure how this would be coded.