Vendetta is fully FPS, fully in your control, but up to a point. But to be honest, a more comprehensive docking method would eliminate the silly "Go at 220 m/s and still dock" technique, and also expand on certain things.

What I mean is like landing in aircraft simulators (best comparison I can give). Or docking rings that one must aim for more... precisely than the current method. Regardless, this would be useful for things such as (suggested in another thread), troop transports. Boarding raids, etc. And even docking moors for capships.

Yeah, it's be sweet if you at least had to align with the dock to dock. No more shoot-and-dock-right-away!
Within a tolerance limit of 10-20%, I agree with this.

[edit]
Maybe some ships could be easier to dock than others? Nice way to help newbs out (90 degrees "docking angle" on the free ship) while keeping it tough on the supercapitalists (5 degrees on the Moth)

Add automated docking sequence that ligns up the ship with the dock for new players.

Make it toggleable and add alignment rings (that decrease in diameter directly proportional to their distance from the dock) that one must not transgress in order to be able to dock.

I don't know about the speed limit. Perhaps 220 ^m/_s is excessive, but it should be possible to dock at speeds above 75 ^m/_s. Or at least the speed should not be limited up until the enter key is being hit.

Perhaps a message like when you don't have enough energy to jump would make sense. 'Slow down to <maximum boost speed> to dock', for example.

This would make it difficult to dock while being shot at it.

Two cents: Stations that you are friendly with would project a force field that you could fly through, but would stop shots; inside you'd then manually dock on a little platform. However if you're trying to land troops on a station or something, the force field obviously wouldn't want to protect you. It'd probably have to be disabled first anyways.

I think that is the whole idea, SMM. It makes no sense that docking procedures can be completed at a speed of 160-220 m/s (even 50-75 is a bit high).

Speed docking is funny.

And at times, it's a lifesafer. Especially if you're docking in M14 after 45 minutes of race, and all hell is loose on your tail.

OTOH, decelerating from 220 m/s (~800 km/h) to 0 in the span of a second, would mean your pilot becomes a reddish splotch on the inner side of the windshield every time he/she docks! :)

Ring-guarded deceleration lanes seem an interesting development. But in the end, it's just eye candy. If you can't be attacked, and just have to watch your ship docking, it means only a longer wait between when you control the ship, and when you access the station GUI. From a gameplay pov, it's an unnecessary annoyance, and just time dilation for the very sake of it. Like the 3rd person view launch animated sequence, really.

I think it's enough to just come in at the right angle. Remember, the aircraft carriers have a bunch of cables you can hook on to, even pretty heavy transport planes come in at FULL THROTTLE!

About being squished by the deceleration, I don't think that's a problem as the gravity-drive of the engines counters that ... or whatever :P

This is only cool in the same way a realistic economy is cool.
It's fun to think about, and how it would work, but actually implementing it would be either pointless or disturbingly bad.

PS: Newbs.

I think you're right, toshiro.

I for one would find this sort of "eye candy" a beneficial improvement to the game, in more ways than just visuals, i.e. gameplay. For example, if such docking bays did have a way of catching your ship, docking on mobile capital ships might not be such an issue. Arguably we don't 'need' anything besides gov buses, so let's not jump on that bandwagon of what's 'necessary' or not. Remember, we're not on the development team or anything, despite however well connected you think you are, I gauruntee nobody knows what this game needs except for incarnate.

full speed docking is indeed something that seems over-simplified for me. Sure, it helps you save your life (and investment, not to say self-esteem) when you escape a firefight through a lightning docking going at 720 km/h (200m/s). But is is a cop-out. You shouldn't be able to do do that (IMHO). There should be a maximum docking velocity. I'm not going to pull the 'realism' card here, but just calculate how much it takes to decellerate 40 tons of mass from 200m/s to 2 m/s in under a second. When was the last time you saw a truck pulling into a parking lot at 20g?

Another thing has bugged me for a while that just now I've come to realise what it is: no real inertia. My ship handles the same no matter how much cargo I'm hauling along. Sure, the bigger ships handle somewhat more sluggishly than the smaller ones. But they (seem) to handle the same no matter what cargo. In Jump Gate (my prior space-borne MMORPG), ships handled according to the mass they where carrying. That means an empty 'truck' could (almost) out-turn a fighter. But fully loaded it took a lot time to turn. And to accelerate. And, most importantly, to decelerate. That meant that it took real driver's skill to bring a fully loaded truck to a station, as you needed to not only hit the bay at the correct angle, but also under a maximum velocity. Not only took it skill to drive a truck - since you coudn't really escape or fight, you needed real (i.e. living) escorts. And it was many a time when I saw a fully loaded truck, after almost an hour of mining, getting mangled badly during docking.

So, I guess I'm not only advocating a correct docking angle and velocity, but also improved physics (i.e. inertia). I'm sure that this will get many people angry, but I believe that it adds to the game, and calls for real skill in piloting (and much more player-player co-operation).

-ch

someone needs to start something like a dunk contest.
introducing: DOCK CONTEST!
Dock in the most show off-y way possible! weapons, spinning, you name it!

Omega is the best docker of them all.

Umm cfranz we already have that.
Try loading a moth full of something heavy, you won't be able to get to full speed before you exit the sector.
Also cargo ships don't get as maneuverable as fighters when empty on purpose, they have more powerful engines but also weight more, meaning they lose less maneuverability when loaded.
Exception it the marauder which flies like a fighter empty but worse then an empty moth full.

Actually, learning to dock was one of the things that fascinated me about Elite. You should try it if you have not!

Heres a legal link! : http://www.spectrum.lovely.net/Elite.html

Some stations should rotate, and be hard to dock at, like that station in sector 14 (i forget what them type stations are called, will prolly remember tommorow) if that would have rotated slowly, it would have been a lot harder to dock with, you don't have to make it as hard as Elite, but I agree, docking is too easy.

maq - thanks, I did not notice, and I'm not that far advanced that I can purchase a mammoth. I'm looking forward to trying it.

yoda - I believe ELITE (ca. 1985 on my Apple ][) made it not only hard to dock, but a prerequisite to terminate a flight. IIRC, *all* bases (in the Apple ][ version) rotated. A single cargo flight was very, very difficult. The trick was to get directly below it (used the base direction indicator for that), and then approach it along the axis. It was not necessary to actually rotate, but was cool if you managed to do it. The docking computer was one of the first things everyone bought. The docking sequence, btw, was inspired by stanley kubrick's 2001 orbital docking scene, in which (to the sound of 'An der schönen blauen Donau' -- or was it the 'Kaiserwalzer?') the shuttle synched it's rotation to that of the station's cenral hub.

Ah, those where the days... Elite was what got me hooked n space sims. Elite is why I'm playing VO.

-ch

I can relate 100% to cfranz. BTW, it was the Blue Danube.

The stations were named Coriolis (the standard, squares-and-triangles ones) and the Dodec (the tech level 12+ dodecahedron).

The very name of the standard station suggested its rotation, which happened along the docking bay axis. And the docking bay was always facing the planet, so you usually approached the station either from behind or (if you're lucky) from one side.

The docking computer, activated with 'C', was the first piece of equipment you should buy with your hard earned cash. But coming at 1000 credits, it meant a LOT of trips stuck with manual docking...

Ah, how I miss Elite's radar. Superior to ANYTHING coming after it, and by and far embarassingly superior to Vendetta's one.

cfranz... try picking up some CtC cargo (purified Xith) if you get the chance it is heavy as hell and your ship will take a noticable performance hit. If you can get your hands on some samoflange that is also fun to play around with.

I'm all for a cap on docking speeds. How about 65 m/s? (sub-turbo)

One other thought I had although it may be unneccesarily complicated would be to make the acceptable docking angle proportional to docking speed. So... if you were traveling at 10 m/s any angle would work but at 200 m/s you would have to be lined up perfectly. If you missed you would go slamming into the docking bay and 'splode making speed docking a risky prospect.

Corvus Vulturius has a top cruise speed of 75m/s, and the IBG/RevC has a top cruise speed of 70m/s. I say make it a little higher, say somewhere between 80 and 100m/s.

I also kinda doubt that the stations would not have some sort of crash prevention mechanism inside the docking bay or hangar (crash web or something) that would slow a ship down. This is 4435, after all. We're flying around in ships that use gravity as a source of energy for propulsion. It's not that unreasonable to expect that the stations can handle docking at 225m/s or higher.

LOL moldy, YES. Omega 0 is the BEST docker known to mankind.

Quote 20 of 96: [100] <[syn]n00b> Not everyone knows how to dock, but that Omega 0 guy, man, he docked the hell out of that station