Read by Council Better Fleet Recall + Better Pick-Up Point Docking

[Benevolent27]

The Problems
1. Right now there are some major problems with recalling a fleet. They fly full speed and barrel into the mothership, bounce off, spin in circles, and are really horrible at moving into position to be close enough to the pick-up point. To fix this, they need to be able to dock while farther away from the pick-up point. And before you say it, I know to put the pick-up point farther away from the main ship and to use pickup rail to lead back to where I want the ship to actually end up, but even doing this does not work very well, since the fleet ships have to get into such a precise location before they dock (and they are not good at it).
2. Docking ships to a base can be rather problematic due to bounding box issues causing massive lag. One solution is to use a pick-up point that is far away from the base and then have the ship slowly move along a rail closer to the base, but this can be pretty tricky to move the large ship close enough to the pick-up point for it to snap on.

Proposed Solutions
1. Allow a rail docker to shoot at a pickup rail and have the ship dock just as though it physically moved into the pickup rail area.
2. Allow fleet ships to use a rail docker, set to position 1 on the hotbar, to shoot at a pickup point they are set to. This way the fleet ships wouldn't have to get so darn close and to such a precise area. It would allow them to make a much larger circle around the mothership till the pickup point comes into view. When they shoot the rail docker at it, they would then snap into place.

I believe this solution would make docking fleet ships much faster, would reduce all the crazy bumping, and would would reduce the amount of pickup rail necessary. And in addition, this would give a viable solution to docking large ships to bases.

Thanks for your time, (constructive) thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

 

[StarWars1981]

Perhaps easier would be to have vessels save 5 seconds of "backlog" flight patterning as their approach vector. This way, when YOU dock them first, they memorize this pattern for tagging the dock. If YOU can't find it... that's your problem. Perhaps give them spar poles with dockers out front, so you can watch it while it goes in.
But mostly, save the approach vector relative to the ship. That way, you control the ship in PERFECTLY the first time, or fiddle for ten minutes, but then it only takes a maximum of about five seconds to reach the pickup point, because the final approach is saved. Teleporting ships may be avoided ... but probably not, unfortunately.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Fleets and fleet systems are currently in the infancy. In the future we are bound to see bug fixes and AI improvements. Currently the AI only has the ability to fly strait at their intended target but they will likely be given a path-finding system that will allow them to fly around a ship in order to get an approach vector.

 

[Madman198237]

Also, a "slow" mode would be nice.

 

[Lukwan]

I think the tools already exist for better drone-recall. The pick up rails don't have to be in a straight line to the rail system in the ship. You are free to put the pick up point out & away from your ship's hull. (Tangential might avoid collisions.) The path can change direction as you lay a 'Bot-Path' for your returning drones.