Help with cargo ship.

[CthulhuPanda36]

Hello everyone,

I'm working on a small cargo ship (approximately 32x15x18) but I'm having trouble with the rail systems. Ideally, I'd like to land the ship on a platform, detach the cargo container from under the ship, and fly away leaving the container docked to the platform. For a visual reference, watch the video below and skip to 2:50.


Here is a really awful picture of what I'm building. The grey part is the cargo container and is attached via a rail docker.

Right now, the container needs to aim at either the platform or the ship and dock manually. I'd like a way of controlling the whole process without leaving the ship.

Thanks for the help

 

[Lukwan]

Two ideas come to mind.
1) Place a Rail-Docker on the underside of your cargo container. Arrange your landing pad so that when your cargo-ship is docked the rail docker on the container is in contact with the Basic-Rail on the landing pad. You will need to play around with switching between the core of the ship and the container. Not sure if magnetic docking works if you are not 'in' the right core.

2) Designate the container as the 'main' ship and dock the cargo-ship onto it. Then you can fly around in the container...dock it...switch to the cargo-ship that is docked on to it...decouple and fly away.

 

[KiloZulu]

I'd say you either want to use the new carrier automatic docking block, or magnetic rails.

Carrier block: put a docking block on the bottom of your container, move your ship so the docking block is within range. Undock the cargo container from your ship.

Rails: To make magnetic docking easier, I like to create a field of rails that all lead to a central point - that way I can get close rather than pinpoint block-to-block touching. Thus, your rail layout might look like this.
>>^<<
^^^^^
^^^^^
^^^^^

In this fashion, all rails direct the ship to the upper-middle block, and as long as you avoid the top blocks to either side, your orientation doesn't get messed up.

To release the container from the ship, you will want to place an activation block on your bridge and link it to the rail block that connects container to ship. This allows you to turn the rail on and off. You will want to do something similar on your station or planet where you're unloading the container, but you'll need a wireless remote block on your ship, linked to another that is on your planet/station.

The main challenge I can think of with such a system is that you have to make sure your cargo container sits still for the four seconds it takes before an undocked entity is allowed to dock again.