Docking Suggestion

[Morra]

Hey Guys,

I think the docking system for either ships and turrets(but especially turrets) is a bit annoying right now.

I think it would be much better and easier if u would have got one docking block and one enhancer block

at each horizontal border. Vertically it should just stop if it hits something in my opinion.

Also if the docking process fails, it should give a bit more precise error message, not just for example 'the docking area is too small', but something like 'the docking area is too small, for this ship/turret it needs to be at least X times X Blocks large.'

This would be much mor informative and would save alot of troubleshooting time(or even completely decimating your turret cause it says its too big...)



Hope you like my suggestion

 

[teoboxteo]

if this happend somethings would go wrong if it says how big i park my ships side ways some time because that is how it fits and it looks cool i whould not always be the right info

 

[Morra]

Yeah i guess youre right. But i think a message like this would be particulary usefull for turrets since it would just have to calculate the max radius for the turret to turn and display that value

 

[MineCatFTW]

Also, it would be nice to be able to rotate or set the orientation of docked ships/turrets.

 

[Morra]

Yeah would be great to have a default rotation for ships/turrets which they snap to when not used/in combat etc...

But what do you guys think about the thing with only one enhancer block at each horizontal border?

Cause i think it would be much more controlable

 

[Krahazik]

I agree that using enhancers to define the corners of the daocking area would be better than the current setup. Also there needs to be more information in the error message to make it more clear.

For example I have a ship, I tried to dock it but got \"Error incompatable\". What does that mean? The docking area is more than large enough for my ship? Can a docking port only support ships made of a certain type or what?

The other thing is I think the docking area should \"allow\" othe rblocks within the area if those blocks are part of the station/ship the docking block is attached to.

Alternatively you could have just a single docking enhancer which adds a UI to the docking port where the player can define the X Y and Z size of the docking area, with a check box to allow or dissalow block within the docking area. The UI could also inclide a set of permission options to control who is allowed to dock at that port.

An example of why I might want to have blocks within the docking area, a docking arm with an extended walkway or port ment for ships that have wide \"wing\" like areas and a narrow nose with a side hatch on the nose.

 

[Krahazik]

This would be a seperate block from the other docking blocks. The universal docking collar can be a single block or multiple blocks connected to gether for from a single unit which is capable of docking with another universal docking collar near by. Docking can only be accomplished if the 2 docking collars can make a flush fit to each other. Otherwise, they do not care about clearance areas or anything like that. For example you could have a collar on a docking arm at a station and then fly your ship up to it. You would have to get the ship\'s docking collar close to the stations collar so they \"see\" each other. When you activate the docking command for the collar, it tries to pull itself (and the ship) into the other docking collar. If any part of the ship ends up colliding with any part of the station or something else which prevents the ship from position correctly for a flush fit then docking fails.

This could be used between a ship and a station or between 2 ships.

Also, a ship could have multiple independant docking collars. Docking collars would act like weaposn in that every docking collar block that is next to another, they act as a single unit. The player could pull up a docking UI in the same manner as a weapon system, and this UI could show them all the collars they have and the status of each collar.

Another option is that collar could be deactivated and activated via the UI, and then an activated collar come within 1 block or makes contact with another active docking collar they automatically try and dock with each other.