Icarthian Docking Classification System

[Morhe]

I've seen plenty of posts classifying vehicles by mass, but nothing that classifies vehicles by the size of docks they can successfully dock to. With that in mind, I present to you the Icarthian Docking Classification System, a system I began using on my singleplayer save and eventually adapted for the servers I play on.

Observations that led to the current iteration of the system:

• Nearly all ships are longer than they are wide and tall. This makes sense from both an aesthetic and functional standpoint, since it minimizes your profile to enemy craft while firing main forward cannons, and also provides plenty of hull surfaces for decorations and detailing.
• Ships tend to fall into one of two general shapes; atmospheric ships with winglike shapes that are wider than they are tall, and non-atmospheric ships that are nearly as tall as they are wide or taller. For the purpose of this system's description, these are colloquially dubbed "Single-Symmetry" and "Double-Symmetry" ships, regardless of the ship's actual symmetry (since that is the symmetry of the dock they will fit in).
• Ship sizes grow exponentially in mass and dimension, i.e. the difference in size between a Fighter and a Freighter is less than the difference between a Freighter and a Frigate.

As such, Icarthian docking classes are described as followed:

1. A class A dock can accommodate a single-symmetry ship with no more than 8 meters of structure to the left and right of the core, 4 meters above or below the core, and 16 meters in front of or behind the core.
2. A class +A dock can accommodate a double-symmetry ship with no more than 8 meters to the left and right of the core, 8 meters above and below the core, and 16 meters in front of or behind the core.
3. Each subsequent class of dock doubles the dimensions of the previous dock (not including the 1 meter in all three dimensions for the core).
4. A dock with no docking enhancers attached to it is classed as a "Micro" dock, and is an exception to the docking class system.

Docking Classes:

• Micro: +3x3x3, maximum 7x7x7 ship. No docking enhancers.
• Class A: +-8x4x16, maximum 17x9x33 ship. Docking enhancers: 5x1x13 (17 total)
• Class +A: +-8x8x16, maximum 17x17x33 ship. Docking enhancers: 5x5x13 (21 total)
• Class B: +-16x8x32, maximum 33x17x65 ship. Docking enhancers: 13x5x29 (45 total)
• Class +B: +-16x16x32, maximum 33x33x65 ship. Docking enhancers: 13x13x29 (53 total)
• Class C: +-32x16x64, maximum 65x33x129 ship. Docking enhancers: 29x13x61 (101 total)
• Class +C: +-32x32x64, maximum 65x65x129 ship. Docking enhancers: 29x29x61 (117 total)
• Class D: +-64x32x128, maximum 129x65x257 ship. Docking enhancers: 61x29x125 (213 total)
• Class +D: +-64x64x128, maximum 129x129x257 ship. Docking enhancers: 61x61x125 (245 total)

The system is easily expandable for larger ships, though I have yet to use anything larger than a Class B dock myself, since ships larger than Class B nearly always have turrets and therefore cannot be docked to a station or mothership (yet).

Notes:

• This classification system does not replace the mass-and-purpose based classification systems used to describe warships, but rather supplements it. When describing a ship, list its docking class first followed by its warship class, i.e. "Class A Fighter" or "Class +B Friggate."
• The dimensions of the various docking classes describe the docking module area only. It is up to station designers to include additional space for walking around docked ships and/or maneuvering recently-undocked ships back out of the docking area, at their discretion.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Starmade docks will allow ships who's total dimensions fit within the docking area to attach, and then place the core in the center of the docking area. As a result, it is possible for a ship to dock with a docking module of a lower class than the ship itself, i.e a ship with dimensions +8/-8x, +4/-4y, +8/-24z is a Class B ship according to Icarthian docking classes (because it has >16 and

 

[starcitsura]

This is brilliant, this is the first classification system I have seen that provides a useful function beyond naming conventions.

 

[Hierarch]

Alright good job mate, but it would be easier if schem just added in magnetic docking, which would fix all our problems with docking

Always,

-H

 

[WarmasterRaptor]

Nice work there!

 

[starcitsura]

While this includes classifications for ships that are wider then they are tall, it includes nothing for ships that are as wide as they are long, may I suggest adding a suffix to indicate ships that meet this definition. Could be implemented as follows:

• AW 16x4x16 Max 33x9x33 Enhancers 13x1x13 (25 Total)
• AW+ 16x16x16 Max 33x33x33 Enhancers 13x13x13 (37 Total)
• et al

An \"extra wide\" Class A would otherwise half to dock in a Class C port, which is quite a bit larger then the ship may potentialy be.

 

[Morhe]

I tried to keep each tier of docking class as simple as possible to avoid a situation where stations need many different dock shapes in addition to the different tiers. It\'s not reasonable to expect a station to have docks for every possible shape and size of ship, so you have to design around \"wasting the least amount of space in the average case.\" Some simplifications were made in the standard for that reason.

The idea is that someone can think, \"My ship is docking class B. Oh, there\'s a dock on the station labeled \'B3.\' I already know my ship will fit there,\" without having to build custom docks for every new ship your faction designs.

I may eventually add a \"-X\" variant that truncates the depth to match the width, for ships in the niche you\'re describing, but I honestly haven\'t seen any ships in that style on any server I\'ve been on, so it didn\'t seem necessary.

• Class -A: +-8x4x8, maximum 17x9x17 ship. Docking enhancers: 5x1x5 (9 total)
• Class -B: +-16x8x16, maximum 33x17x33 ship. Docking enhancers: 13x5x13 (29 total)
• Class -C: +-32x16x32, maximum 65x33x65 ship. Docking enhancers: 29x13x29 (69 total)
• Class -D: +-64x32x64, maximum 129x65x129 ship. Docking enhancers: 61x29x61 (149 total)

So, essentially, the \"+\" prefix doubles the Y dimensions of the dock, and the \"-\" prefix halves the Z dimensions of the dock. You could create your own \"+-\" prefix, which would represent a dock with double the height and half the depth of a standard dock, i.e. a Class +-A dock would be +-8x8x8. I\'m probably not going to include that style of dock in the main post, though, partially to avoid over-complicating the standard and partially because I think super short/fat ships are ugly.

 

[Travesty]

The plus\'es and minus\'es make the system a little more confusing than it needs to be. Where docking is concerned, you usually have two options: Docking ports that are made for a specific type of ship (faction ships, escape pods, landing crafts, etc), or public docking ports that need to be able to hold a variety of different ships. Private docking ports don\'t really need a class system, because they won\'t have many different ships coming and going. Public ports need to hold a variety, so usually they should be just as wide as they are long, and with a reasonable height.

Because of this, I think the letter is all you need, and should represent both the width and length. Public ports should be square, because you never know what\'s going to need to dock.

 

[Morhe]

At the moment, there is only standard docks and +docks; I left it as simplified as possible, which in my initial observations meant accounting for long ships and long-but-also-somewhat-tall ships. The -dock variant was in response to someone who suggested a variant for flat disc-shape ships, which I haven\'t yet decided to include in the main docking specification. Though, quite frankly, I don\'t think adding the -dock variant would be as complicated for users as you think it would be, since all anyone has to do is look at their ship\'s catalog description and match their docking class to the lettering on the station walls.

The point of having a public docking classification system is to accommodate the widest variety of unforeseen ship types while consuming the least amount of space; to do that you have to primarily focus on the most common shapes of ships that might dock on the station. To that end, having only giant, even-on-all-sides cubes would be the worst system you could come up with; the only ships that are shaped like that are the PvP Borg cubes, which tend to mostly be found on servers where you don\'t have the sort of community that would need public docks.

 

[Soban]

I like the idea of magnetic docks, but how would they work with odd ship shapes (Like say a X wing with wings out streached that you want to land normally?

 

[Zenithas]

As I said in Nameless\' ship size guide, figured this needed a resurrection for newer players. Going to push for it to be somewhat more official if I can on star.the-rebel-alliance.com:4242, definitely going to make it a more official thing for the Cult of the Green Sun. Much kudos.

 

[Tacotown99]

cool idea but why don\'t you name it by ROLE nobody seams to do that

 

[D3matt]

Because you don\'t care what role a ship is when deciding how big of a dock you\'ll fit on.