Help with docking?

[KiloZulu]

Here we go again - this seems to happen to me every so often.

I have a carrier and I'm trying to dock the drones to it. I've created a fleet and made the carrier the mothership. Once I add a fighter to the fleet I dock it to the carrier. After launching the fighters, I try to recall them, but instead of going back to their pickup point, they make a bee-line for the carrier's center of mass or something.

I've checked to make sure that the pickup rails are active. I've wiped the pickup points for the fighters and re-docked them a few times now. I've deleted the fleet entirely and rebuilt it - none of it has helped. What am I missing? Thanks.

 

[NightFury76]

did you beam dock or location dock the drones to the carriers pickup rail.

because you need to location dock them

 

[Valck]

What am I missing? Thanks.

Faction modules on the fighters?

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Try location docking with only one drone to test the carrier recall functions. Once you have it working, then add a second. If they both work you should be good to add the rest in the same way.

My issue that I experience from time to time is when the pickup rail doesn't pickup and I have to delete and recreate it. The behavior I see is the docker just passes through with no docking reaction.

 

[Madman198237]

The biggest issue is to make sure that you dock drones via the pickup rail. Then, as soon as the last drone stops, double-check that they are all in a fleet, that the carrier is the mothership, and then launch and recover them, before doing anything else.

If they're still broken, swear loudly and repeat the procedure, perhaps first adjusting your docking setup.

 

[terra mining corp.]

Ya and the best is when you set up and tests launch systems and they work perfectly,then fly into combat and poof!! no launching drones

 

[KiloZulu]

Thanks for the replies. I'll try to answer in order:
I used location to dock for them - that is, I flew to the pickup rail and let it grab hold of the drone.

I do have faction modules on the fighters. I double-checked to make sure that the faction was set, since I used admin-load with faction on. I reset the faction on them and chose the faction over, just to make sure.

I've been using just a few drones while I try and work out the problem. I've tried resetting their pickup point and docking them in different bays to see if that made any difference - which it has not. I haven't had any issue with the pickup point not picking up a drone within range. That, at least, has been working. If you are having that problem, you might try attaching an activation module to the pickup block - that has been the solution to the problem when I experienced it in the past.

I have verified repeatedly that the drones are all in the fleet, and that the mothership is in the fleet and has an asterick next to its name. They launch as designed, but do not recover properly. The pickup areas listed for each drone are in an order that makes me believe that they know where they're supposed to be going to dock.

 

[Lukwan]

I have a SOP that helps improve drone-docking. Fleet order into 'Idle Formation' first then recall to carrier.

Occasionally I have found that a drone missed the pick-up point and just spins in place. Re-issuing the recall order usually works. * I would love it if the Devs made the drones try three times to perform a docking if the first attempt is unsuccessful after 60 seconds.

Also, does my carrier have to be stationary the whole time? Every time I am moving it seems to interrupt any drone docking in progress.

 

[decurr]

When you issue the Drone Recall command, make sure your drones are in line of sight of their pickup points. They will head straight through your ship to get to their pickup point.

 

[KiloZulu]

When you issue the Drone Recall command, make sure your drones are in line of sight of their pickup points. They will head straight through your ship to get to their pickup point.

Thank you, I was aware of that. The drones aren't making any attempt to head towards their hangar, however. They are heading directly towards the mothership's center of mass or ship core (both near the same location.)

It gets stranger - I added a separate hangar for some mining drones last night. They return and dock just fine.

My new theory (perhaps someone can confirm?) is that the problem arises from the fact that the hangar itself is a docked entity. I built the hangar to retract into the belly of the ship. I've seen other ships use this feature (Galactica replicas, for example) so I didn't think anything of it.

 

[Lukwan]

My new theory (perhaps someone can confirm?) is that the problem arises from the fact that the hangar itself is a docked entity. I built the hangar to retract into the belly of the ship. I've seen other ships use this feature (Galactica replicas, for example) so I didn't think anything of it.

I am not 100 % sure but this seems to be the likely culprit. Carrier recall is a fleet-order. It must be given by the Flagship since the Flagship is the only one in the fleet that can be designated Carrier. Yet the flagship is not the target of the Drone-docking. You have the Drones docking to an entity that is docked to the Carrier (technically it is a separate entity).

I'll go out on a limb and suggest that this might work if... the docked hanger-bay was declared the Flagship.

 

[StormWing0]

Carriers can't be docked and recall ships to them for some reason last I checked but it's worth checking to see if they fixed that bug yet. >_>

 

[NightFury76]

I think you are on to something, run the green rails from the drones position inside the retracted bay leading out through the docked bays travel and out to the existing pickup point. The drones will dock and wait at the point they collide with the bay. As the bay retracts the drones will move will. Which I guess wont work because of the way undocked entities get shot out is they collide for more than 30 seconds. But you can only try

 

[Mork2]

Just did some testing the carrier return didn't work for me if the pickup rail is on a docked entity. It has to be the main ship core that its attached to.

 

[KiloZulu]

Thankfully the ship's design is such that I should be able to adjust the docking system to work around this problem.

 

[splatthecat]

I haven't tried with some of the more recent updates but I don't believe that there have been any updates to the the fleet mechanics.

Recently, I had a drone carrier docked to my station. The dock was aligned to galactic centre. The carrier was then launched and tasked with a mission. It would appear that the carrier would recall better if it was realigned to centre first.

I don't know if it was by design or simply an anomaly.