How Do You Dock (Stylistically, not Mechanically)?

[Edymnion]

Ever since we went to rails, the beams have come from the rail dockers and not the core of the ship like in ye olden days. Which means for larger ships you are pretty assured to not be able to see the beam from your main flight vantage, which means you need a camera near your docking port. Problem there is if the camera isn't facing forwards, you can't actually maneuver the ship from it (you can't turn).

So, how have you been building your docking areas on your stations? Do you custom fit a dock for each of your ships so that you can put the beam in front near a camera and tweak it until the nose mounted docking just happens to make your entrance/exits line up somewhere on the side? Do you put a camera on the side and mostly fly it in blind until you think you're close enough for the docking camera to see the target for the beam? Are you building in such a way as to still be able to see the beam from your main flight camera?

Honestly curious as to how you guys have been handling this, because its been frustrating the hell out of me how to get a good, easy to use universal docking system going for my stations where I can just fly up, hit the docking beam, and be ready to jump out of my ship without bending over backwards to make it happen.

 

[karkinosz]

-snip-

Well how I do it myself is quickly switching to build mode while docking, and using light taps to orient the ship when I quickly switch back. However I find it easier sometimes to just have a camera about 20 blocks behind the dock as another part of the hull. Either can be a viable solution for you it seems.

 

[Captain Tankman]

Put a Camera behind (or next to) your docker in the direction you want to dock.
E.g. if you have a docker on the right side of your ship, put a camera next to it (facing right) and when you're in that camera the beam will fire to the right side, too.

 

[Cozaar]

I've started placing a camera near the top of my USD-1 rings on the vessels, meaning I need to line ships up as close as possible before switching view to that camera; in a strange way, having limited maneuverability while viewing from that camera makes it feel more like a "docking maneuver". Since the ship doesn't pitch with mouse movement, it makes directing the rail docking beam easier since I'm not bumping into anything.

Conversely, I've got (crude) extending docking tubes on my stations for the vessels that need some extra room to dock.

 

[Tunk]

I dock side on most of the time, usually rock up to my station and zoom out for initial alignment.
After initial alignment I jump to camera view and use the simple movement to align enough for the beam to connect.

 

[Sgtwisky]

Oh how I wish I could fire the docking beam from the front camera on my ships. For now I have just decided to custom build docks, and place the rail docker on the front of my ships. that way I can basically fire from the front camera of my ship while facing the dock. THEN I build whatever walkways I need up to the ship from the station. Sometimes I have to adjust the docking rail, but I can get it pretty close most of the time. Basically I design the dock, docker, and station to work together. It takes more time, but I don't have to worry about switching to diff cameras or anything. Just use my main piloting camera.

 

[StormWing0]

Depends on the ship really and what' I'm up to. Bigger ships usually have airlocks to dock at while smaller ones just dock to those or other things with dockers in the right spots normally on the front or on the bottom.

 

[kiraen]

I'm not sure you should put much effort into figuring this out. It's going to be different kind of complicated once we get magnetic docking.
Meanwhile, I just place cameras as needed and fiddle with my alignment.

 

[Xacktar]

I tend to do floating docking anchors that are set apart from my station. The diamond shapes beyond the station in this picture are some of the anchor docks. They are part of the station and extend the shields and protection without being obtrusive.

Due to this set up, I often build small shuttles for each ship so they can fly from the ship to the station's smaller internal docks and back.
It is also easy to expand the number of docks as you gain more faction members.