Recognized by Council Invisible, Intangible Rail Dockers

[SkylordLuke]

Jesus Christ on a bike!!! Edymnion what the hell dude? xD
I can put my dog infront of me,ask him how to dock that bird of prey,and he will do it in a second

There is not a single shape in the universe you cant dock using just one well placed docker.
as someone who built tons of rail creations where you actuallyy had to think about how to dock complicated shapes and how they fit inside the tight space,in all directions and inverted mirror creations of the same things.. I can tell you are bat crazy,sorry man


...
also,let us not forget the horrors of placing docking enhancers.. never again...
or having ONE single non-colliding block inside a 1000x1000x1000 docking box,and you would not be able to dock.. I still have nightmares.

 

[therimmer96]

I understand your point, but I still dislike the idea.

Lecic is right, losing your rail docked should be a concern. Having a new nav beacon just for this block is not practical simply because of the number of docked entities one ship can have.

Spoiler: This is my small WIP

Imagine all the rail docker something larger could have. Thats not even got support ships or turrets.

Why is having a floor of rails and pick up areas not possible? Just fly over them until your in the position you want to be in, and fly down and you'd enter a pickup area for that ship and it'd dock. Simple. just takes some actual thought to designing your things rather than wanting a standardised way of doing things to make your life simple.

Or use a shipyard core. They can sit in the middle of the hangar, and as long as all your ship cores are in vaguely the same place, you can dock. They don't even need to be tied to a shipyard, I've checked for my own station docks.

And if that's not possible for some strange method, fortunately, you already play in singleplayer because you can't grasp the concept of PvP, so just mod your rail docker block to be non-physical and remove the texture, or just make it like 99% transparent.

 

[Valck]

Jesus Christ on a bike!!! Edymnion what the hell dude? xD
I can put my dog infront of me,ask him how to dock that bird of prey,and he will do it in a second

There is not a single shape in the universe you cant dock using just one well placed docker.
as someone who built tons of rail creations where you actuallyy had to think about how to dock complicated shapes and how they fit inside the tight space,in all directions and inverted mirror creations of the same things.. I can tell you are bat crazy,sorry man

Consider a few different ships with folding landing gear, and a single landing platform/hangar bay/runway that should accommodate each and any of them, like you might have on a space port.
- You can't place rail dockers on the landing struts, because they are docked to the main ship, and you can't dock to two entities at once.
- You don't want to place the rail docker on the main hull because then you'd have to have some kind of structure extend from said landing platform, and you'd have to know exactly where and exactly how far, which would make a one-type-fits-all landing bay impossible.
- You can't have a docking tunnel extend from the hull because again, it would have to be docked to the main ship, which means it can not also dock to some structure on the platform at the same time.

If you have a hard time imagining the scenario, think Millennium Falcon/Lambda Shuttle/X-Wing for ships, and Mos Eisley space port/Bespin gas mine/Deathstar docking bay/Endor shield station for landing platforms, that are compatible and interchangeable despite having vastly different layouts.

Also please, no need to call people names just because you can't see a use for their suggestion.

...
also,let us not forget the horrors of placing docking enhancers.. never again...
or having ONE single non-colliding block inside a 1000x1000x1000 docking box,and you would not be able to dock.. I still have nightmares.

Nowhere does the original post suggest docking enhancers, or docking boxes. It's about an addition to the rail system, not about reverting to the old docking system.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

First off I would like to point out that just because the block is intangible doesn't mean it cannot be destroyed. If that is your concern you have no worries, it was discussed and there will likely never be any block that cannot be destroyed. Sure it may be hard to snipe off in PVP combat but you can currently hide rail dockers inside ships and use pickup points and pickup rails to achieve the same thing and even more as hiding it in a ship will have not only the benefit of it being hard to find but it can also be fully enveloped in armor so I don't see how this one block could have any effect on PVP combat over current blocks.

The entire point of this suggestion is to enable odd shaped ships to dock without having to build complex docking arms or hangers around specific ships. The point of bringing up the old style docking was to outline the one thing it did well. Rails do everything else better but with the old style dock as long as your ship fit in the box it docked, no if ands or butts about it. Currently there is no way to recreate this with rails. Yes you could custom build every ship to fit specific docks and utilizing systems like USDs make docking larger ships a breeze as it's standardized.

I for one miss "planetary" style docking, it was the one thing that the old style docks did well and while I would take rails over old style in a heartbeat it is just missing that one simplistic feature. I play on a cooperative server and not all the players use USDs but in stead favor flat port docking but it would be impossible for us all to standardize our ships to dock to these platforms, if it was a simple case of putting one of these intangible docks in the center line of a ship it would enable a lot of ships to dock to each of our stations without altering our aesthetic choices. I have several designs that do not even have docking capabilities due to their odd shape. Starmade at it's core is a creative game and it is just doesn't seem acceptable to tell somebody their ships are built wrong. Well maybe when PVP comes into concern and then the only reason to not build a cube is the stigma around doom-cubes.

This one block would enable ships to dock that:

1. Appear to hover (Some ships are never supposed to touch the ground)
2. Have landing gear (combine this with intangible logic and you can have a ship land and automatically extend it's gear)
3. Are any shape and any size landing on flat landing pads without having to custom tailor the pad

 

[jontyfreack]

but what if there wasn't any flat docking areas?

your whole system is ruined.





with the current system a magical thing called building is very useful

 

[StormWing0]

hmm so far I'm seeing the OP wanting a pass-through version of the rail docker that is also invisible normally. So to get around the PVPer complaints just make it visible when you have a Rail Docker Selected just like with Pickup Points. Problem solved and you can kill it with a warhead or something and call it a day. XD

Also I use docking rods rather than any of the usual docking systems people are using because I don't feel like caring what people are using to dock to my things.

 

[SkylordLuke]

hmm so far I'm seeing the OP wanting a pass-through version of the rail docker that is also invisible normally. So to get around the PVPer complaints just make it visible when you have a Rail Docker Selected just like with Pickup Points. Problem solved and you can kill it with a warhead or something and call it a day. XD

there we go

also,I should mention that invisible/intangible rail rotators addition to invisible rails would be cool,since you cant rotate your fighters and drones inside carriers with current system

 

[therimmer96]

hmm so far I'm seeing the OP wanting a pass-through version of the rail docker that is also invisible normally. So to get around the PVPer complaints just make it visible when you have a Rail Docker Selected just like with Pickup Points. Problem solved and you can kill it with a warhead or something and call it a day. XD

Also I use docking rods rather than any of the usual docking systems people are using because I don't feel like caring what people are using to dock to my things.

So you can see it when you have a rail docker selected... then you switch to cannons and oh shit its gone.

 

[Valck]

So you can see it when you have a rail docker selected... then you switch to cannons and oh shit its gone.

Then make it so it's visible when you have a weapons computer selected. Since it is the active part of the docking mechanism, it doesn't make too much sense anyway to see it when you have another active part selected.

 

[StormWing0]

So you can see it when you have a rail docker selected... then you switch to cannons and oh shit its gone.

lol if you can't aim at a target you were shown by memory when it goes invisible again than I guess you don't deserve to hit it. XD

 

[DrTarDIS]

There aren't any pure PvE servers anymore.

That might tell you something about how the community wants the game to progress.

Unrelated to that bit of tongue-in-chee;
I'd like to see the docking point of a sub-entity be able to dock the main entity. This would allow LANDING GEAR(or docking pylon/clamps) to drop down out of the ship to dock to the station/other ship. Right now, landing gear is a fluffy RP thing, rather than a useful system. Kinda...annoying...for all the reasons of bounding box and odd shapes listed above.

 

[Valck]

I'd like to see the docking point of a sub-entity be able to dock the main entity. This would allow LANDING GEAR(or docking pylon/clamps) to drop down out of the ship to dock to the station/other ship. Right now, landing gear is a fluffy RP thing, rather than a useful system. Kinda...annoying...for all the reasons of bounding box and odd shapes listed above.

While bidirectional docking would further increase the available options, it would still restrict the contact points of the landing gear to predefined locations, and not help with the issue this suggestion tries to solve.

 

[El_Poulpy]

My opinion about this thread is: true problem wrong answer.
the solution to this problem is the landing pad that was discussed when we brainstormed about docking mechanic.
A bloc that can doc to any bloc if there is enough space. It would be great if it were finally implemented. It shouldn't be that hard to implement now that we have the docking block that do that already, it just has to be on any block.

 

[MgnfcntBstrd]

Pickup rails provide an alternative. Simply put your Rail Docker inside your ship. If you want to draw a ship closer, you can do that. If you want to anchor it outside, you can do that, too. Since there's no collision detection, you could put a rail docker right behind your ship's core if you wanted.

Spoiler: As an example:

Of course, you can't use logic along this pickup rail, but it seems like you're mostly talking about larger ship docking and such.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Pickup rails provide an alternative. Simply put your Rail Docker inside your ship. If you want to draw a ship closer, you can do that. If you want to anchor it outside, you can do that, too. Since there's no collision detection, you could put a rail docker right behind your ship's core if you wanted.

Spoiler: As an example:

View attachment 24217

Of course, you can't use logic along this pickup rail, but it seems like you're mostly talking about larger ship docking and such.

This was exactly the point I was making to anybody who things this particular suggestion could be abused in PVP because the hidden docker would be hard to snipe in combat.

This however doesn't solve the problem this intangible docker is trying to solve. It's point is all you have to do is make a single flat docking port and any ships that center their intangible docker can land there. While yes you could put the rail docker inside and lower a ship to a flat docking port you will run into collision issues unless you stop the ship from attempting to move once it hits the deck and you have no options for logic. Docks and ships would still need to be customized for individual ships. as you cannot have both rail docker and dock at the outer edge and center of the bounding box in all instances.

 

[MgnfcntBstrd]

This was exactly the point I was making to anybody who things this particular suggestion could be abused in PVP because the hidden docker would be hard to snipe in combat.

This however doesn't solve the problem this intangible docker is trying to solve. It's point is all you have to do is make a single flat docking port and any ships that center their intangible docker can land there. While yes you could put the rail docker inside and lower a ship to a flat docking port you will run into collision issues unless you stop the ship from attempting to move once it hits the deck and you have no options for logic. Docks and ships would still need to be customized for individual ships. as you cannot have both rail docker and dock at the outer edge and center of the bounding box in all instances.

However, if there were intangible logic blocks, you could stop the rail automatically when the ship collides. :D

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

However, if there were intangible logic blocks, you could stop the rail automatically when the ship collides. :D

You would only be able to detect where the rail docker is not really if it has docked unless you use stuck detection and that adds much complexity to the simple "I have a flat platform I want to land ships on no questions asked"

 

[MgnfcntBstrd]

An intangible rail docker would run into the same problems without the same detection logic, so it doesn't really change that.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

An intangible rail docker would run into the same problems without the same detection logic, so it doesn't really change that.

Yes you would not be able to detect on the ship but the landing pad could, if we do get intangible activators (I hope we do) it would enable both ports to detect a successful dock as it would be exactly two points docking to each other instead of a a rail docker being somewhere stuck on a pickup rail.

 

[Lukwan]

If you're on a PVP-friendly server, then you consent to getting killed every time you undock from your homebase. Simple as that.

It's not "griefing" if it's the entire point of the server - and we don't need features that damage a given playstyle's viability in the environment in which it is supposed to exist.

I don't consent to getting killed...I risk getting killed. There are many reasons to play on a PVP server. If I am mainly interested in building I will need an environment that lets me field-test designs against human players. I can't do that anywhere else but a PVP friendly sever. Not every one wants to play cut-throat RP style. So lets not entrench into the argument that there is only one proper way to play a game based on building.

SM is first and foremost a creative game. Lots of games lets you play a war of domination with pre-made vehicles but SM needs the mechanic that protects a player's last redoubt. Otherwise you are trashing people's hard work because you want to conquer the universe. What makes one style of play more important than another? There is room for all kinds of players to share in the PVP experience and there is no right way to play.