Docking Enhancer's Recent Change

[Eratos]

Before:
I could setup a 10x10 cube of docking enhancers in any configuration and you could fit almost any size ship on the server into it's docking module

As it stands now:
Making structered docking enhancer group for a large ship leaves little room for choice in design. A giant 3 sided L design would have to be made to hold a ship of a large size. I think the way the docking enhancers work now are good for small ships or docks that have actual docking bays, but are redundant and don't work so well for larger ships without enclosed docking bays

What could be:
A switch for the docking module itself seems plausible. An on/off switch, allowing the switch between the new mode and the old mode.

 

[Ambedrake]

I found when doing bays for large ships a pyramid shape for the enhancers works quite nicely. Even for smaller ones its still nice but not necessary.

 

[bobucles]

There\'s nothing wrong with needing a big dock to hold a big ship. But it is a bit annoying to try fitting tall ships into a good dock design. I have a slightly different system to suggest:

- Base docking module is as default.

- Adding a booster module to any side will stretch the dock 1-2 points in that direction.

- A pair of booster modules on opposite sides of the docking block also add 1 height.

 

[Eratos]

The problem is you still need a big gigantic box to put the ship in if you want to dock, when most space docks are really gonna be a tube extended out to the ship, especially if the ship is larger than the station.

 

[Harbinger]

Eratos, I don\'t see the flaw here - I\'ve seen a ship design (posted by someone in the chatbox, sadly don\'t know who) which had docking tubes on its sides and the dockiing modules simply extended inside the main ship.



Though I would like for seperate groups to be used to expand the docking area - if I don\'t have enough length in the area I have, I waste 3+ docking enhancers to link it to the other side.

 

[schema]

The main intention of the new system is: to dock big ships, you have to have at least a certain size to do so. I don\'t like the idea of the mother ship being smaller than the ship docked to it.



It also will have further gameplay reason I plan for the future

 

[Xiphon]

While improving the docking system, can you add more rotation options to the docking module? As it is now, all ships docked face the same direction if docked on the same plane of orientation. All ships docked on a planet face one direction. It would be better if we could choose which way the ship will face.

 

[bobucles]

for a dock to be somewhat similar in scale to the ship that it\'s docking. But are dock dimensions the best way to do it? Dimensions have a way of scaling the dock\'s capacity very quickly. Perhaps it may be more effective to use a scale that is more linear, like block count or ship mass? Even if dock capacity increased in a way similar to reactor power, it would still increase at a much less steep curve compared to the cube system.