Forums » Bugs

Tridents can dock at conquerable stations.

Mar 08, 2012 TheRedSpy link
During a La Familia training exercise in bractus m14, I was able to position my trident docking bay over the dock to attempt to block entrances by other members. It was during the 2 minute timer between stations. When I did this it gave me a message "you cannot dock here at this time" or somesuch.

Anyway, after I returned with owner keys, I positioned myself in the same way then POOF, I was docked in bractus m14 with my trident type M, I loaded up some stored verasi foods for pup on my ride home and repaired/refilled.

Thats where the fun ended, as I launched from the station I quickly became embedded into the docking bay.

I wiggled my way out a little bit, but ultimately couldn't break free until I logged on and off with people taking my position in space each time. It took around 10 minutes to get out.

I'm not sure if this works with other stations. I'm not going to try it. But it is clearly not intended.
Being able to dock in other stations besides m7 is an awesome idea and would be super cool. But being about exit in under 10 minutes is probably the intended outcome.

:)
Mar 09, 2012 abortretryfail link
lol. Can they still dock with other capships too? I remember seeing a pic of a Teradon undocking from a Trident that was pretty hilarious.
Mar 09, 2012 CrazySpence link
Hah!

Next time you're defending the dock I'll give you a key
Mar 14, 2012 raybondo link
Heh. "Then don't do that!"

Actually, there's nothing to prevent any ship type from docking with any docking bay at this time.
We'll have to add that to prevent the undocking problem you're seeing.
Mar 18, 2012 TheRedSpy link
hehe. Raybondo i'd be willing to bet I can find some stations in the verse with docking bay positions that will actually let you dock and undock. It's just so much effort to get out of a borked one.
Mar 26, 2012 Conflict Diamond link
Mar 26, 2012 look... no hands link
so i wonder, does that mean that in theory the way the game is currently setup a trident has an unlimited cargo hold, just a big damn pyramid of tridents? I wonder what that would break if they all tried to undock simultaneously?
Mar 26, 2012 Conflict Diamond link
I have yet to attempt dock scissoring with another player cappie. What happens if they both have auto-dock on and both dock with eachother simultaneously? Do they cease to exist?
Mar 27, 2012 yodaofborg link
What happens if they both have auto-dock on and both dock with eachother simultaneously? Do they cease to exist?

Head 'asplodes.
Mar 27, 2012 Pizzasgood link
My guess is that a trident with passengers who docks with another trident will have the passengers sent home. It would definitely be a good idea to confirm this experimentally though. Name it Operation Matroska.

If they are not sent home, the questions to answer are: what happens when people use turrets on a docked trident? What happens when people try to undock from a docked trident? Does the number of people in the inner trident count toward the docking limit of the outer trident? Does anything strange happen when a trident containing docked ships operates the turrets of another trident?
Mar 27, 2012 abortretryfail link
If a moth or atlas with gunners docks with a capital ships your gunners get sent home. I've personally tested that one.
Mar 27, 2012 Conflict Diamond link
I had to try it at Verasi I-5, hoping to get trapped inside the big rock (not this time, darnit). It took 5 or so minutes and a few logoffs to get free, with Axiom helping in his X-1 tugboat. I did manage to get 600 xith out of storage, too! Sorry the pic didn't catch the convoys that were launching thru me.

It'd be awesome if you could make the big tunnel a cappie exit bay, or dedicate/add one docking bay as a mooring-type dock for cappies

Mar 27, 2012 TheRedSpy link
Heres 8 relatively game-breaking things I've been able to accomplish with tridents.

1. Dock at any station. Including escaping from attackers who abuse the lack of consequences from having

2. Dock at any trident, undock successfully. This technique can be used to reload and repair tridents for free instantaneously, and in addition to teleport players to the beginning of a sector whenever you like. You can also break voys by docking with the voy trident and sending it flying through space at 600m/s off course.

3. Break the NFZ so that players can freely shoot the trident without bringing out the strike force.

4. Render ships invisible and thus invulnerable at a jump out point but still alive in the sector and thus able to report locations.

5. Sneak KOS players into the capital systems to kill people right out of stations.

6. Block voys from entering stations and allow them to build up around the station in massive amounts.

7. Shoot behemoths out of the docking bay. Though, this has been known for a long time.

8. Kill an infinite no. of strikeforces at an extremely high rate while taking absolutely 0 damage to the hull of the trident. Allowing farming of law neuts at an absurdly high rate.

Now these may not have been a problem when the tridents we're in the hands of 4 relatively responsible players. But with my reputation as such a troublemaker, can you really risk leaving tridents unfixed?!?!?!

Not to mention we are likely to have 10 in the game before the faction redux takes place!

I know that the community was given a choice to have a quick implementation vs. a longer wait and a properly fleshed out one. I understand why the choice was made given the track record of the devs to have magical interruptions that cause gameplay updates to get put on the backburner, and I understand the dev's perspective where running a business has to be the first priority or the servers go offline. But in retrospect I think it was the wrong call. Trident's need an urgent fix and once they are fixed and implemented as intended this experiment shouldn't, in my opinion, be repeated. It causes much more trouble than it's worth.
Mar 27, 2012 Pizzasgood link
#5 isn't game breaking, and we have been able to use convoy tridents for that purpose for years. The main advantage to having a helpful player trident instead is that it sticks around to provide RR, which is normally unavailable in nation space while KOS. But that is a good thing. It allows for fun stuff like nationalist invasions of enemy territory.

#8, on the other hand, is a hilarious exploit which does, sadly, need to be fixed someday.
Mar 27, 2012 TheRedSpy link
True, I may have originally come up with the idea of having a thread called "10 ways tridents break VO" and sadly not actually had 10 breaking ways. :(. I agree that it's not game-breaking no.5, but there will definitely be those who think it is Rin.

My biggest concerns, beside the obvious #1 and #2. are #4, and #8.

I'm sure there is 10.. Grrr.. I'll just have to play around a bit more.

My overriding point here BTW is tridents need to be implemented as intended quickly before more people get them and the game explodes with exploiters. Saying "Don't do that" is not going to do the trick I'm afraid. I mean you could try and police this kind of behaviour to stop it from happening, but wouldn't it just be quicker to patch all these things up?
Mar 28, 2012 Conflict Diamond link
Responsible reschmonsible! I just now successfully exploited my theory that in a storm at i8 you can warp out of being stuck in the station since the storm exit is right there, moving 20 FCP in 4 trips to M7 while bringing in 1800cu of ore and SSS from M7. Is it as intended? no, but it is a hilarious workaround while we wait for the devs to give us SOME way for trident pilots to access their station inventories such as the pilot launching and ferrying in a shuttle while cappie remains parked & vulnerable, or a mooring/wet-dock that leaves the cappie outside the station, similarly vulnerable.

Convoy tridents and connies have some magic way they deliver cargo at their destination station, so again I say "give us what the NPC's have" (or in this case: make the voy cappies have to "wet-dock" to complete their mission! It'd be cool to see a connie sidling up to a station. add some tugboats!)

of course the sector-center warp exits were a workaround for convoys following a different storm exit marker than the player was given. I suppose the fix to my vile exploits would be to simply move the i8 and m14 stations a little off sector center :( C-12 is fogged and never stormed, so no action needed.
Mar 28, 2012 TheRedSpy link
Lol Cd yeah that's going to be nothing compared to the crying of The coalition of care bears when we have two tridents in a sector hold up that just rep in each other and remain invincible forever in the sector dropping tu after tu. Screw shields, we don't need them with super invincible docking shooty tridents that can fly out of sector at 600m/s. Sure makes dodging missiles easy lol.

Hmmm... Now I wonder what happens when you jam a trident into the exit bay of a station and then dock and undock another trident shooting them both out.... Hmm... Today's exercise in reschmonsibility no doubt!
Mar 28, 2012 Conflict Diamond link
that's going to be nothing compared to the crying of The coalition of care bears when we have two tridents in a sector hold up that just rep in each other and remain invincible forever in the sector dropping tu after tu.

"Sauce for the goose, Mr. Saavik: The odds will be even." -Captain Spock

sounds like vo nuclear armageddon approacheth.

/me gets out a bottle of 3,000,000 sunblock.
Mar 28, 2012 TheRedSpy link
My only hope is phaserlight has his camera out. We wouldn't want youtube to miss out on teh lulz!
Apr 02, 2012 TheRedSpy link
Okay. Further testing has revealed a number of issues:

1. There are multiple other issues with #8 that really do need to be resolved. It's quite interesting how the mechanics work around the capital systems and it doesn't make a lot of sense to my why they're there in the first place. Further, these issues go beyond tridents. You do not need a trident to experience this bug.

2. I have mapped a few stations that are extremely easy to get out of. Theres a particular design to look for in a station that is a simple < 1min undock for a trident. Even the more difficult or complex stations will be undockable after 1 logoff and then you can leave infiniturbo on just to have it undock for you and go to jumping range.

It's a bit silly. Are we all just supposed to not dock with tridents now that its simple, easy and more time efficient to do so?

:(