Docking should be split: Rails, Turret, Fixed

[Sven_The_Slayer]

With your suggestion, would power gen on rail docked entities also travel to the main ship?

Yes, I would hope so.

 

[NuclearFun]

After some playing around in the dev blog, i think we should be able to spawn in a entity solely by rail docker or be able to remove the ship core after placing down a rail blocker and so have a distinction between entities docked to the ship like turrets or ships and "dumb" entities like doors or elevators. Building would still be easy with build block. This could also provide some help when balancing shields etc...

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

After some playing around in the dev blog, i think we should be able to spawn in a entity solely by rail docker or be able to remove the ship core after placing down a rail blocker and so have a distinction between entities docked to the ship like turrets or ships and "dumb" entities like doors or elevators. Building would still be easy with build block. This could also provide some help when balancing shields etc...

I suspect we might need the HP system for this. How do you "kill" a core-less ship part? will they just float around after disconnected from a ship? Or perhaps they go into "over-heating" when they are disconnected or the rail docker is lost.

 

[NuclearFun]

I suspect we might need the HP system for this. How do you "kill" a core-less ship part? will they just float around after disconnected from a ship? Or perhaps they go into "over-heating" when they are disconnected or the rail docker is lost.

You are probably right, but i guess it could be just the rail docker working as an alternate version of the ship core.
Your video on the elevator made it very obvious that the amount of entities will go crazy...

 

[FullMetalFox]

Sven, i dont see the issue with not being able to build, lets call them oldschool turrets, with the new system, while yes you have to create a slightly bigger axis points, you can still essentialy reproduce the whole motion spectrum and asthetics of old school turrets by creating a very small base plate, and slapping a huge turret body with fixed barrel on it. Think of how missile turrets are build IRL, if you do it smart you could even create turrets that way that have a greater axis limit as oldschool turrets. (90° up instead of just 45°)

On smallest turret, thats not the smallest possible point defense. Fun aside its not like tiny 3x1x3 anti missile turrets would be very effective anyways, while yes they get larger with the new system, this might as well encourage people to do some research/tests on how anti missile turrets can be made more effective, and the increased axis also increases their coverage.



On differentiating docked entities, one way the system could seperate "purpose entities" and "part entities" would be the existance of an AI Module, the idea for that has been floating around in other threads already as i know.

No AI Module present = Ship/Station/Planet Part, doesnt show up on hud or nav when docked. Fully protected by the Shield of the entity its docked to.
AI Module is present = Turret/Drone/Auto Fire Weapon, does show up on nav, depending on nav filter and AI Setting. Gets some Shield percentage from the entity its docked to.

Althou this would still cause one issue, docked ships without an AI Module would get full protection from the entity they are docked too, if that is a bad or good thing propably depends on who you ask, some people propably would like it. All ideas ive had so far to counter this, endet up in another issue or exploit.

Another solution would be another type of core.



To counter the feared issue of free shield cap for docked AI entities, or reduced shield cap for the mothership, i would suggest that any (active) AI equiped entity gets a shield capacity based on a percentage calculated by its Mass related to its Motherships Mass, essentialy free shield, to negate that free shield effect any damage on said entity would be subtracted from both the entities shield and its Motherships shield, shield cap modules on docked AI entities should increase the entities shield cap as usual, but also add their shield cap to the mothership. That way docked entities get some protection without reducing the overall capacity of the mothership, shield caps on docked entities still have a use.



TL;DR, its 2 in the morning and im on create walls of text mode, so this was rather short imho.

 

[NeonSturm]

I suspect we might need the HP system for this. How do you "kill" a core-less ship part? will they just float around after disconnected from a ship? Or perhaps they go into "over-heating" when they are disconnected or the rail docker is lost.

Do you have something against debris?

Personally I'd like core-less non-station entities to over-heat.
But I also think that there should not be a single-point-of-failure at the docking point as it makes big-docked-parts less interesting.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Do you have something against debris?

Personally I'd like core-less non-station entities to over-heat.
But I also think that there should not be a single-point-of-failure at the docking point as it makes big-docked-parts less interesting.

I love debris, I love jumping in over heating ships and letting them drift. It's just a performance concern if a ship overheats and leaves a lot of random crap floating around.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

At the very least this needs to happen:

ok I managed to put together a diagram of my argument. Its a pretty big picture hopefully you can all see. and again sry if im derailing (pun not intended) this thread.

Sven_The_Slayer I would definitely appreciate it if you could at least get the devs to look at this

 

[FullMetalFox]

I bet that the starting equip will get a major change anyways, and "not every ship has a flat surface to easily dock from" docking arms/tubes.

 

[jath]

The problem with relying simply on the rails and their point to point docking is it will be impossible to make universal docks. Most docks will have to be specially built for specific ships and even ships in the same fleet by the same builder might not even be able to share docks properly depending on build style. Rails also have their own logic interface so docked ships cannot be automatically launched from rails.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong here. It's quite easy to create a universal dock for any ship. In fact, it's so easy, I don't understand why people haven't already figured it out. Check out my suggestion for docking on the suggestion forum.
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At the very least this needs to happen:

Why does any ship need to dock on a flat surface? It's space. Just have a walkway or ramp extend to any point on the ship that you want it to connect to. The old way of thinking about docking is about to be dead altogether.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I'm sorry, but you're wrong here. It's quite easy to create a universal dock for any ship. In fact, it's so easy, I don't understand why people haven't already figured it out. Check out my suggestion for docking on the suggestion forum.
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Why does any ship need to dock on a flat surface? It's space. Just have a walkway or ramp extend to any point on the ship that you want it to connect to. The old way of thinking about docking is about to be dead altogether.

Your suggestion is for a user created universal docking collar, which will not work in small fighters. I fully intend to be able to dock my larger ships airlock to airlock in space but this does not help me make a station which can dock a wide variety of ships including small fighters. Why do I need to have flat landing pads? I want to, my hanger bay was designed to land a dozen ships on it's flat deck, any additional docking structure would not be possible.

Customizing hangers for specific ships =/= universal docking, yes there are ways to dock every ship but there is no way to build a dock that can accommodate the majority of ships. Remember, you loose nothing but gain a lot by adding this system so why would you fight it?

 

[NeonSturm]

Perhaps we need faction-specific docking standards to encourage creativity? :D

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Perhaps we need faction-specific docking standards to encourage creativity? :D

Creating docking standards for factions or just your own shipyard is a great idea... it still doesn't fix not being able to dock certain ship types on flat ground.

 

[NeonSturm]

Creating docking standards for factions or just your own shipyard is a great idea... it still doesn't fix not being able to dock certain ship types on flat ground.

Just make an universal-docking stick at your dock.

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[Sven_The_Slayer]

Just make an universal-docking stick at your dock.

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What part of flat confuses people so much? Any structure required to dock a specific ship makes it no longer universal.

 

[jath]

The term universal doesn't mean it works with absolutely everything. You have to design your ship with universal standards in mind. USB is a universal data plug, but that doesn't mean you can jam a VGA plug into it....

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

The term universal doesn't mean it works with absolutely everything. You have to design your ship with universal standards in mind. USB is a universal data plug, but that doesn't mean you can jam a VGA plug into it....

Now we are just arguing semantics... I want the ability to land any ship on a given flat platform, be it a hanger or just a landing pad, regardless of the size and shape of the ship (based on location of the core for reference) as long as it fits based on collision without any fancy docking arms, docking collars, tubes, branches, cod pieces, whatever. Universal! If it fit's it docks, no questions asked.

 

[SkaireKrough]

Any structure required

The "any structure required" part of your statement gave me an idea.

To be a truly universal docking method, there should be no requirement on the entity being docked to to have any specific block anywhere. The docking ship is the entity that would need the blocks needed to connect the 2 entities together. Such as landing gear ( either fixed or retractable) to land/dock on any sufficiently flat surface.
Those ships that were never designed for or intended to 'land' only need a way to 'tie-off' to either a station or another ship, actual physical contact not really required, in which case the current ship's core docking works fairly well.

Why not just allow ships to latch onto other entities much like astronauts do when you press the space bar while looking a any nearby entity, but do away with the whole aligning snap motion. Target what you want to you want to 'tie-off' to, bring your ship close ( a few meters, or actual contact if landing) then press a specific keyboard key and your ship will maintain that set distance, facing and orientation no matter what movement the other entity makes. The other entity will of course have its movement capabilities affected by the extra mass of your ship. Either entity should be able to break the connection or disconnect by simply targeting or selecting that entity in the navigation listing then pressing the disconnect key.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

The "any structure required" part of your statement gave me an idea.

To be a truly universal docking method, there should be no requirement on the entity being docked to to have any specific block anywhere. The docking ship is the entity that would need the blocks needed to connect the 2 entities together. Such as landing gear ( either fixed or retractable) to land/dock on any sufficiently flat surface.
Those ships that were never designed for or intended to 'land' only need a way to 'tie-off' to either a station or another ship, actual physical contact not really required, in which case the current ship's core docking works fairly well.

Why not just allow ships to latch onto other entities much like astronauts do when you press the space bar while looking a any nearby entity, but do away with the whole aligning snap motion. Target what you want to you want to 'tie-off' to, bring your ship close ( a few meters, or actual contact if landing) then press a specific keyboard key and your ship will maintain that set distance, facing and orientation no matter what movement the other entity makes. The other entity will of course have its movement capabilities affected by the extra mass of your ship. Either entity should be able to break the connection or disconnect by simply targeting or selecting that entity in the navigation listing then pressing the disconnect key.

A very interesting proposal indeed.

I did get another idea as well. Rail dockers are described as being magnetic, so why can't they latch onto any hull block? This won't fix the problem of odd shaped ships being able to dock 100% but if it has any flat surface capable of placing a rail docker than you would be able to land it on a flat pad regardless of where any basic rails are located, this also reduces the blocks needed to create universal docking collars, you could put the docker anywhere and once lined up magno-lock it down... of course the block to block coupling over docking beam would have to be in the game.

 

[Drakkart]

Really are we picking apart what Sven wrote instead of just trying to understand that the man wants to keep the core game simple? Easy to understand for newcomers as well? Please build your faction docking whatever but you just can't argue that the old system being able to dock a ship as long as it fit into the bounding box by holding the shipcore in place above a docking block was an awesome solution that served us very well and that should not just being abandoned for something more complex and more in depth to figure out while you are playing the game.
Also i don't want my only docking block to be exposed on the hull and as soon someone shoots it of i am not able to dock my ship anymore i mean that would be stupid. please keep in mind that these regulations about you need this and then you can add that to it... Are just there to mimick RL irl you just bring it in and not matter how destroyed if you have to you just glue it in parking position before rough weather is coming... we can't do that in a game so leaving the option in the game that a core is sufficient to dock would be just the most natural thing to do. because it already is in the game hello!