Docking Improvements

[DNASamurai]

Now, I am not saying the current docking systems are bad, but they can use some general polish as most elements in the current build.

One problem I am currently experiencing is with Docking Modules. I have a rather long ship I wish to dock on the side of my space station. I have outward facing docking mods, and I expanded the length of the dock zone to run parallel to the side of my structure. I have expanded it so that it would fit, in all aspects, if the ship would orientate itself into the area I planned on having it docked.

My suggestion, to help cancel this, is to add a more in depth orientation system for docking, including an option to set the front face of the ship, to point in a particular fashion.

I am no expert, but it seems a simple fix enough, then again, I could have this feature and just not see it, or that the complications of the system would be a serious problem to implement.

Thank you for your viewing of my suggestion, and I hope it is taken under consideration. Also, if you agree with this, or have had a similar problem, comment below.

 

[SilverBack]

Place docking extender like this


X o o o o o
o o

o

o

o

o

o

X=Docking cube
o=Extenders


This is the best method i\'ve found for achieving the perfect size and orientation for any ship.

 

[Hersheys]

Perhaps if there was a block (a cheap block) that you had to put onto the ship in order to actually dock it, but you could link that block to a specific part of the outside of your ship to be the \'docking point\' that it uses whenever docking with the mothership?

It would certainly allow for cool docking setups with actual docking ports on the child ship.

 

[vabese]

could be slightly op, and anything right now is \'cheap\' since balancing

 

[1adog1]

This is essentially my idea for a magnet system, read my post on Docking in this forum.

 

[D-Car]

If anything is wrong with the current docking systems, it\'s a couple things which are totally fixable.

1 - Let people choose what direction ships will face when docked.

2 - Let people choose which direction to expand the docking perimiter, as opposed to expanding it in two dimensions as a core mechanic.

 

[vabese]

2 - Let people choose which direction to expand the docking perimiter, as opposed to expanding it in two dimensions as a core mechanic.


at current times you need to make a 3d shape, the other most reaches of the thing are whats its gonna be, it doesent matter that you start from a corner or the middle or anywhere else

 

[D-Car]

Go back into the game and expand a docking perimiter, then tell me how it doesn\'t expand in two directions at once unless you\'re moving it away from the docking block. I didn\'t say anything about a 2d shape, i said we need to be able to expand the docking perimiter in one direction at a time.

 

[Greaterix]

personally my main problem is the orientation of the ship once docked is just plain awkward - it would be much better if it docked head-on, instead of orientating to be \"bottom docked\" from what I can work out.



Expanding as it is - in my opinion makes alot of sense.

if you had to do each direction individually, you\'d need double the amount of enhancers. as it is, it\'s quite intuitive and easy only needing 3-axis rather than the 5-axis the method you\'re suggesting would need.

 

[D-Car]

Actually, the fix for that is to just make the docking enhancers add twice as many blocks in a given direction.

 

[Greaterix]

or equally just place the dock in the middle of your docking area and leave it as it is :P



having to worry about placing enhances in 5 directions which have to be connected would be a huge step backwards imo, but by all means it will have to be an option.



But bare in mind if you have to place in each direction you want to extend you\'d then have to extend in the same direction as the docking area instead of being able to go outwards by going backwards (if that makes sense) which will mean if you have a larger ship they\'d have to be quite the distance away to allow a large enough area without intrusion by the enhancers.

 

[D-Car]

The problem here is you\'re thinking the ship will cram itself into the docking region as long as it\'s the right size. In reality, the ship core will position itself directly over the docking block. This often creates problems of its own, which means the best solution is to have the docking region be completely customizable by means of dropping the docking block where your core needs to be in order to have the ship fit in the area you\'ve built around it for a dock, while also allowing you to expand the virtual \'assigned\' docking area to fit the internal region of the dock and also fit the shape of your ship inside of it. The current mechanic does not support proper docking of custom ships in custom hangars, once you\'ve got more than a couple hangars, because you can\'t always adjust the hangar itself to fit the virtual docking region.

 

[shadowcrusnik]

The only problem i have with docking atm is i can\'t dock ships that have turrets (A.K.A. Chain docking), and you can\'t build NORMAL docking enhancers from the factories.

 

[D-Car]

Yeah ... that\'s annoying, to be sure. Apparently it\'ll be fixed sooner or later, though. Hopefully with better control for groups of AI\'s, too.