Oolite Bulletins

What is the largest reasonable size a station can be and still be AI dockable?
As of 1.77 the Tori2.01 stations are too big and leave an ton of ships just waiting around it.

Curious - I always dock on manual, but I just checked this at Xevera Torus, and I just sat there. A little positioning at first, then a few ships launched, and then the music - but no docking. I was the third ship when I arrived - by the time I gave up, well... this pic shows it best.

Mmm.. I see what you guys mean.. methinks this thread belongs in the bug reports section.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Mmm.. I see what you guys mean.. methinks this thread belongs in the bug reports section.

I'm not sure if it's really a bug per-say.. as the core code just isn't designed for stations that size

On the other hand, it could be argued that the docking code should work, regardless of station size, given that OXPs can add XXL stations at will.

Dr.Tripsa wrote:

Diziet Sma wrote:

Mmm.. I see what you guys mean.. methinks this thread belongs in the bug reports section.

I'm not sure if it's really a bug per-say.. as the core code just isn't designed for stations that size

They're not that big! The docking code should be able to cope with stations up to say 20km across - bigger and the ships might have trouble getting close enough to target it while staying out of collision range - but the Torus should be fine. I'll check it out when I get a moment.

The amount of ships should be independent of the size, so size should not matter.
I cant remember any issues with the tory. But it could be that approaching ships have to make a bigger detour, making that you thought there were only a few busy docking. When you activate the docking clearance protocol (since 1.77 part of Oolites preferences) you will get messages about the amount of ships in a queue. And that should, obviously, only count down. If not, you can call it a bug.

From observation, all the ships arriving went to their first way-point and remained there. None of them were docking - all were motionless.

El Viejo wrote:

From observation, all the ships arriving went to their first way-point and remained there. None of them were docking - all were motionless.

Ah, that seems familiar. I noticed it recently. That is the AI that misses a message and than hangs. Maybe that happens more often at big stations, but that is just a matter of logging the AI. But that never happened with 1.76.

Thargoid wrote:

I keep seeing debris around Kiota stations, which seems to be coming from ships which launch, then decide to get where they are going by flying through the outer body of the station (the rotating arms).

Hmm... I often see two or three cargo pods floating near the dock whenever I approach a Torus station too.

Hmmm, this sounds like a sinister plot by the Guild of Scavengers

While I have no real support for this beyond experience, the debris around a Kiota Station may have less to do with it's arms (which seem to me to be much smaller than the Tori) and more to do with the fact that they have no Aegis, pirates often (as I have seen and this is probably emergent rather than hard coded) congregate near the Kiota Stations.

What I have seen in the torus stations is launching ships colliding with waiting ships.

I have observed (while waiting for my train, thanks for TAF in trunk not sooo long... ), that an escort flew into a station (Kiota Solar Station, I think) after having "paniked" because it's mother flew away and it had tried to get around the station twice or so but always being stopped by the "arms".
Propably the AI set a waypoint when there was no arm because of rotation... and then the escort rammed it, when it couldn't avoid collision fast enough on the third try.

I found the probable reason for the 'docking problem' for the tories. The docking bay is off-centre. When I examine the position, I get: And the current code sends a HOLD_POSITION when the dock of a rotating station is 0.1 meter off-centre. I think the the code should also allow one or two meters tolerance.

EDIT:
I centred the dock position in shipdata to 0,0,500 for both Tori types and from than on docking went smooth. I even added a bunch of extra traders for docking and after some time there were no waiting ships.

The slight off-centre definition was probably for cosmetic reasons, but even from close distance, I could see no artefacts with the fully centred position.