Oolite Bulletins

Rese249er wrote:

ILS isn't working for me. I've purchased the equipment, used r to lock, had weapons on- and offline, stopped and at speed...

-Are you got the "ILS set to ..." message when you used the r key? I f not then aim exactly to the station to lock.
-Until you are stopped will not happen anything.
-Weapon's state doesn't count.
-A test: undock, stop, F2, r (must get the ILS message), F1, set a slow speed and your ship should turn back to the station. Make sure you roll your ship in the last stage by hand until the docking animation (which is much better with [wiki]BGS[/wiki]).

Working now, quite well I must add. Thank you for your patience!

I don't suppose you'd be willing or able to make a prime-able version for sunskimming?

There is already a helper in sunskimming.

That's not it, that's sun skimmer pods. Sun skimmer autopilot is a different OXP, also by Okti.

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Auto_Skim_OXP

Speaking rom past experience, that OXP is as likely to blow you up as ill your tanks. Yours behaves a lot smoother. I'd imagine it's because of the additional capabilities of the Oolite engine in addition to your very different approach to roughly the same purpose...
And maybe you could make a scoop version too?

ILS v1.4:
-Fixed landing in Rock Hermits.
-Fixed a bug with Towbar.

In v1.5 most NPC ships can dock faster without roll, up to 80m width - all core ships except Cobra3 and Krait. Please try it, in my tests the speedup was easily noticeable. Should cure traffic jams.

Stations can handle a single ILS signal at the same time, so if you target the station then will guide your ship, else assign automatically to the nearest non-wide NPC with active docking AI.

Wide NPCs can give a try also if you put a target lock on them during station approach, just these need some luck to arrive in the right position.

In v1.6:
- NPC ILS improved: earn even higher speeds (full injectors until the last 3km) and used up to 95m width for Krait.
- Must wait until the current ILS-user NPC dock before ILS can be used by the player. If you target the station while a NPC using ILS then you lock on the landing ship - a help to find where it is. If you keep the station in your crosshairs when the current ship arrive into the dock then you get the right to use ILS regardless of there are others in the queue. Alternatively you can wait until all ships arrive into the dock - you can not break an already started ILS approach.
- A manually targeted NPC will not get priority over others (contrary with v1.5) due to NPCs must finish the landing sequence without break.

In v1.7 I polished NPC ILS further:
- Wide NPCs can use ILS, these will wait for the right position before the dock.
- Lonq queues finish faster due to the speed based selection of next NPC.
- Auto switch to the next ship when the current ILS user suffer attack.
- No more "ILS set to" message when player is docked.

Tried this, and it looks very nice, but I'm playing Thargoid Wars which means I'm often in combat near stations, it gets a bit tricky if the ship suddenly changes course because it's locked onto the station accidentally!

Also, I'm flying a BIG ship, and while this is lining up axially it doesn't do anything about alignment relative to the rotation of the station - it feels like I should be taking horrendous damage by coming in with the width at right-angles to the width of the "slot" but it somehow doesn't happen, which is a small suspension of disbelief.

For the first part, what I think it needs is a way to turn ILS off without turning off weapons lock itself. For the second, maybe ships should take damage if the pilot doesn't match rotation? I've decided to uninstall it for now anyway.

ffutures wrote:

I'm flying a BIG ship

Which ship? Even an Anaconda can dock sideways. If your ship's width (you can see in [wiki]Gallery[/wiki]) is less than the height of the actual dock (a bit over 100m in coriolis and rock hermit, 80m in dodo and ico, 64m in most old oxp stations) then you can dock without roll.

ffutures wrote:

a way to turn ILS off without turning off weapons lock itself

The "t" key do this. ILS works only in ident lock and not in missile lock mode, willfully after a similar request above.

ffutures wrote:

maybe ships should take damage if the pilot doesn't match rotation?

The core game deliver enough damage if a ship hit the dock and none when fit into.

The pilot can choose from these when the ship is too wide:
1. Practice at a specific speed and learn to roll during this speed.
2. Stop right before the station, wait until the dock roll into the right position (a bit before horizontal), then accelerate.

I can add a warning message if you target a station where your ship should roll.

Norby wrote:

ffutures wrote:

I'm flying a BIG ship

Which ship? Even an Anaconda can dock sideways. If your ship's width (you can see in [wiki]Gallery[/wiki]) is less than the height of the actual dock (a bit over 100m in coriolis and rock hermit, 80m in dodo and ico, 64m in most old oxp stations) then you can dock without roll.

It's A DTT Cyclops. I can't get into the Wiki right now so I can't check the width, but it holds nearly 700 tons of cargo.

Norby wrote:

ffutures wrote:

a way to turn ILS off without turning off weapons lock itself

The "t" key do this. ILS works only in ident lock and not in missile lock mode, willfully after a similar request above.

On the whole I really prefer not to lock missiles or Q-bombs onto stations. Accidents happen, and GalCop do not appear to have much of a sense of humour.

Norby wrote:

ffutures wrote:

maybe ships should take damage if the pilot doesn't match rotation?

The core game deliver enough damage if a ship hit the dock and none when fit into.

The pilot can choose from these when the ship is too wide:
1. Practice at a specific speed and learn to roll during this speed.
2. Stop right before the station, wait until the dock roll into the right position (a bit before horizontal), then accelerate.

I can add a warning message if you target a station where your ship should roll.

It never feels like there's much room for manoeuvre, which is why I've always rolled to match stations when docking. I suppose if the ILS is accurately threading the needle accidents are less likely, but there really ought to be some small possibility, especially if the pilot goes in at high speed with injectors. A warning is probably a good idea, if people start taking docking for granted there are going to be accidents.

ffutures wrote:

I can't get into the Wiki right now...

Down for its nightly back-up - which is where to go at such times.

ffutures wrote:

It's A DTT Cyclops.

It's 80m wide so can dock without roll into main stations and rock hermits. (*)

Thinking further I can narrow the ILS usage in red alert to switch on only when you are facing to the dock.

(*) A side note for those who are interested in the under-the-hood technincal details: some long ships with widening shape like Anaconda can dock sideways even into the old docks with 64m height (used on OXP stations) regardless of the ship max. width is about 80m. The reason is the docking happen when the nose of the ship touch the center of the dock which is only 125m far from the beginning of the dock due to the standard length of dock is 250m. So the fit-into formula for long ships is if the max. width in the first 125m of the ship is less than the height of the dock then can dock sideways without roll. Then out of scene the ship probably locked by arms which turn the ship to right angle before pull inside the station. The length of Cyclops is 170m so the width which count should be measured at 125/170=73% of the ship model, which is about 70m so fit into main stations and only sometimes need a few roll in OXP stations with the flatter dock.