Round station ports being a stickler

Chrisfs · Post by **Chrisfs** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 8:21 am

apologies in advance, but
If you are designing a space port and you want to avoid scraping ships off the side,
why do you give it a rectangular, rotating opening. Why not a circular one that maintains it's shape, so that ships aren't constantly having to match the roll, in order not to die....
It would seem to make more sense.

I know the rectangular shape is more of a challenge, but I am just saying...

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:02 am

See here for the alternative opinion.

Wiki pages · Post by **Thargoid** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:45 am

It's also in part why I wrote Traffic Control OXP, plus why Lave Academy (and also the Aquarian Shipbuilding Corp HQ in Aquatics) do have rather large circular or octagonal docking ports...

Chrisfs · Post by **Chrisfs** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 7:28 am

I would like to take this opportunity to say how much I love fuel stations.

zevans · Post by **zevans** » Tue Sep 29, 2009 12:21 am

If your ship isn't rotating and it enters a rotating spacestation along the axis... surely that's gonna hurt whatever shape the door is. Or is there some sort of arrestor hook equivalent that spins your ship up almost immediately to spacestation speed? (eg the carousel on the Discovery in 2001.)

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Tue Sep 29, 2009 2:27 pm

zevans wrote:
If your ship isn't rotating and it enters a rotating spacestation along the axis... surely that's gonna hurt whatever shape the door is. Or is there some sort of arrestor hook equivalent that spins your ship up almost immediately to spacestation speed? (eg the carousel on the Discovery in 2001.)

In Lazarus (quoting from ones own work is a little naughty I know) - it was all done with magnetic damping (good old eddy currents and all that) - the more you are out of sync with the magnetic spin of the docking port the faster you are brought to an aligned halt...

(and when exiting the station you align yourself with the central axis of the exit port and allow the stations own computers to spin you up to match the rotation of the port before it blasts you out under magnetic impulse. (mostly technobabble with a hint of proper science underlying it all))

zevans · Post by **zevans** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 1:04 am

DaddyHoggy wrote:
In Lazarus (quoting from ones own work is a little naughty I know) - it was all done with magnetic damping (good old eddy currents and all that) - the more you are out of sync with the magnetic spin of the docking port the faster you are brought to an aligned halt...

That's not gonna work on my new all-carbon no-radar-shadow stealth Krait...

...look, here it is arriving at the workshop!
http://www.youtube.com/user/motorstelev ... WoTyBSeLM4

phonebook · Post by **phonebook** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 2:47 am

I've been thinking about this-

its a non question, docking is a very very simple procedure to a space pilot, just as landing an aircraft is to one of our pilots in the real world

its like asking: why aren't airports on earth made of thick slabs of soft foam so the aircraft doesn't have to risk touching the runway

Chrisfs · Post by **Chrisfs** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 4:32 am

Landing on a rotating thing is much more difficult than landing on a stationary thing. And even rotating itself would not be an issue if it were a round rotating thing, so you wouldn;t be faced with match it or collide with the walls, you would go in with tons of room to spare (remember each space stations has a capacity of many ships) and sync up while stopped as far as forward motioin goes.

Airports are engineered for safety. They have long runways and with space ahead and behind for miscalculations.

Liike I admitted at the beginning, I'm being a stickler.

Gamewise, maybe
I think you should have corporate space stations that don't rotate (like fuel stations), but they have mediocre prices, whereas as other systems have stations that rotate and their prices are much better (cheaper cheap stuff and more expensive expensive stuff),
so you get an incentive, but if you want to stick to easier ones you can.

Diziet Sma · Post by **Diziet Sma** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 5:10 am

Chrisfs wrote:
I think you should have corporate space stations that don't rotate (like fuel stations), but they have mediocre prices, whereas as other systems have stations that rotate and their prices are much better (cheaper cheap stuff and more expensive expensive stuff),
so you get an incentive, but if you want to stick to easier ones you can.

Hmmm.. some interesting thoughts you're having..

I'm of two minds in some ways on this...

Part of me feels that there are some things in life which simply are not easy to do.. it takes practice, failure and persistence before we can consistently do well. The game reflects this...

Perseverance will get you to where you can dock on injectors, like some of the more thrill-seeking Commanders on this board.. some go so far as to say it's actually easier!

The other part of me sees that docking could be a little daunting for some ~~virgin~~ first-time players of Oolite, the idea of such a station OXP deserves to be explored...

A compatible back-story might be a good place to start.. does anyone have any ideas on this?

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 9:13 am

But docking manually on a rotating station is in fact a piece of cake. I really don't see why it is treated as a difficult job requiring advanced skills here.

Post by **Kaks** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 10:42 am

Maybe some of us have done it so many times that it's second nature, and some ships are definetly easier to dock than others: normally, the only way I can crash on docking is if I wedge my cobra in sideways.

Aligning to, then spinning in sync with a station is probably as difficult as that kid's trick of tapping your head & rubbing your tummy at the same time: a bit weird to figure out at first, but once you get the hang of it, you wonder what the fuss was all about...

I'm sure I've said it once before, but docking is a good way to learn how your ship handles. If you can't dock manually, you'd be rubbish in combat ( unless you've got all the auto targetting stuff, turrets and whatnots, which are not available to a fresh Jameson anyway ) I wouldn't leave the Lave system unless I felt I could dock successfully most of the times...

Diziet Sma · Post by **Diziet Sma** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 10:50 am

Just a thought.. there's the precision toggle available for joysticks.. is a precision setting feasible for keyboard control?

phonebook · Post by **phonebook** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 11:00 am

nope!

i am not particularly good at these things- and i sure as hell wasnt before i could drive a car

its simple- get the slit in your crosshairs and then rotate until the face of the station leans away from you. rotate up, a little speed, then back to the station. is it flat to the screen? no- then repeat, yes, then a little closer

little by little, you'll never die docking, and you'll realise that you dont have to be dead centre or anything like that- after a few times it will become easier than pressing shift D

btw- docking is MUCH easier with a joystick MUCH MUCH MUCH

CptnEcho · Post by **CptnEcho** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 12:45 pm

Diziet Sma wrote:
Just a thought.. there's the precision toggle available for joysticks.. is a precision setting feasible for keyboard control?

In Elite (for computers using DOS) there was a feature to enable keyboard toggles that would increase or decrease the continuous rotation of a player ship. This was so a player could exactly match the stations' rotation rate during a docking manuver.
The feature is not currently in Oolite.