Oolite Bulletins

Any tips to help me dock.
Read the instructions but still crach everytime.

Which instructions have you read?

You can look here

I've found that it is more difficult at very slow speeds, it's best to have a bit of speed. You have to line up straight, and when you are pretty close you can hit W or injectors to zip you in quickly whilst you are oriented properly.

Edit:

To line up correcly go to the navigation beacon to start your approach.

It's much easier if you have a joystick. I usually approach the station at full speed. When I'm about 5 seconds out I start spinning with the station. A little bit later I drop to about 2/3 thrust. You want to make sure you can see both the ceiling and floor of the station. If, for example, you can see the floor, but not the ceiling (i.e., you're too high), then you need to stop and readjust. You can be off quite a ways to the left or right. Sometimes as you're entering you'll start drifting to the left or right. As long as you're pointed in the middle half of the hanger, you should be fine.

Can't really give any hints if you're using keyboard, I just know it's a lot harder.

I can only offer the same advice as the good Commander. park between the nav-beacon and the station and line up with the slot. If you see the four navigation lights in the centre of the dock you are lined up dead centre. If not, put propulsion to 25-50% power, and pitch up or down and roll until all four dock lights are visible. Once you see them all, hike the engines up to 100% and get up to the slot. When the slot takes up most of your screen, roll to meet the rotation, then tap the appropriate key to keep rolling at the same rate. Don't panic if you appear to be over-taking the roll of the station, simply stop tapping for a moment until it catches up, then continue tapping. If you aren't keeping up, then line up with it as it swings around again and tap faster. Even if you aren't perfectly lined up with the roll, most ships have a certain leeway as long as the four dock lights are visible.

Good luck.

Captain Hesperus
"I hope you gave him the number of a good paint-shop. He'll need it after docking the way you said."

Thanks for the help.

You are right, using the joystick is much easier

Even once you're in the docking slot, the lights will let you know whether you're lined up or not. Keyboard is no big deal, just keep tapping.

If you think that's hard, you obviously never had to dock in BBC Elite - lining up with a rotating black slot on a black background with no nav beacons or lights to guide you in was no fun at all. Even the docking computers didn't always get it right. Manual docking in Oolite is a doddle compared to that.

Eeeh, we had in rough in them days, I can tell ye!

Must admit have played the game on the BBC, might be that getting older makes it more difficult.

I found it tricky at first, and traded my butt off to get a docking computer, but after a while it does seem to get easier so you don't mind killing a few cops, and you get a bit blase about docking, which is fine untill you write off a load of kills and credits because you forgot to save the last couple of trips! Waaaaaaaaah!

forgot to save?! crikey, i save as soon as i dock, and before i leave - i've had trips where i've fought off wads of pirates, scooped some sweet cargo like dozens of kilos of platinum, docked, bought fuel, hit the F8...and the window's vanished. "soz Killer, parachute deployed and all that" in the STDERR

Dock, save, fuel up, save, trade, save. Seem to spend most of my docked time in the F2 menu. It seems with me that the Energy Bomb drops the dreaded parachute most often.