Ceiling Docking

[Hexed]

Hey all, I'm currently working on a ship that will have a dock for ship to ship shuttles or a short range fighter craft of some sort. The kind of small craft you would see in Star Trek like the Federation runabout.

I've decided that for the sake of efficiency I'd like to dock it to the ceiling of my small hangar and I am now struggling with a gravitational quandary, so to speak.

My idea was this; I would dock the ship, enter an area trigger linked to the larger ships gravity which would result in me walking on the ceiling of the hanger. I would then enter a small room which would rotate and put me through an area trigger to enter the main ships gravity so I would be right way up. The idea was that the rotation of the room would hide the gravitational shift to a certain extent.

This was inelegant to say the least. And it didn't work particularly well no matter how I tried it.

So I'm curious about how you dock your ships, and how you manage to transition smoothly from the smaller craft to the larger crafts gravity.

And yeah, I could just align it with the main ship. But that is both boring and an inefficient use of space.

 

[timethatswasted]

Transporters?

They work between docked entities without lowering shields I believe.

 

[Hexed]

I haven't experimented with Transporters to any great extent. Do they automatically apply the gravity of what you are transporting to?

I was somewhat eager to find a more ... "manual" means of achieving my goal. But if nothing else Transporters at least serve as a viable compromise.

 

[Aynslei]

I haven't experimented with Transporters to any great extent. Do they automatically apply the gravity of what you are transporting to?

I was somewhat eager to find a more ... "manual" means of achieving my goal. But if nothing else Transporters at least serve as a viable compromise.

Transporters themselves won't apply gravity, but you can have area triggers right above the transporter blocks and those can be used to activate gravity immediately after you land. So if you can use gravity+area triggers (which it sounds like you know already) it can be done.

Another way you may try your current docking method is to have the gravity on the rotating room first. That way you exit the ship to the "floor" of the rotating room, that then rotates to match the "floor" of the main ship, then just realign the astronaut to the main ships gravity.

That should result in a much more fluid rotation into an upright position relative to the main ship.

 

[Hexed]

Transporters themselves won't apply gravity, but you can have area triggers right above the transporter blocks and those can be used to activate gravity immediately after you land. So if you can use gravity+area triggers (which it sounds like you know already) it can be done.

Another way you may try your current docking method is to have the gravity on the rotating room first. That way you exit the ship to the "floor" of the rotating room, that then rotates to match the "floor" of the main ship, then just realign the astronaut to the main ships gravity.

That should result in a much more fluid rotation into an upright position relative to the main ship.

That...makes absolute sense. Wow. I have no idea how I missed such a simple solution. Thank you.

I suppose sometimes my enthusiasm for complexity has it's downsides.