Vega Strike Forums

So I just went from 0.4.3 to SVN a couple days ago and the game is no longer fun for me because I can't seem to successfully dock with a mission-related ship. Over half my mission targets so far have been ships, so this is a real problem for me. It's not just the issues with being in spec or not, although those are fun (the indicator on the HUD made much more sense than the practically invisible indicator on the dashboard, by far) but they never hold still and it's just become stupid. Sorry, but chasing ships from star to star just isn't fun! It was much easier when ships held still.

Maybe this is all just part of the attempt to rebalance, but when coupled with the amazing slowness of the ships, the reduced margins of commerce, etc etc, it makes the beginning of the game that much more tedious. Is anyone actually managing to enjoy SVN without money hacking their way into a non-crap-pile? Not that there is any such thing near the Crucible...

Anyway, I'm going to go start looking through the python, but has anyone already done this by any chance? I just don't want to ever have to dock with a ship to complete a mission. If there were some meaningful communications system in which I could tell a vessel "I'm here with your cargo, could you stop?" and have them actually say "Yeah, I'll stop you so you can dock instead of having to try to ram your way into my cargo holds" then I wouldn't feel this way.

Sorry about any formatting lameness, I formatted for 80 cols and C&P'd this here. I hope that doing this has no other repercussions, but so far it seems to have solved my problem.

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Okay, here's the patch to stop you from ever having to deliver goods to a
ship. Ever! You could just change the odds, though. Personally I think that
it should check your current ship to see if you can even pull off a ship
docking, at least until the AI is smart enough to stop ships when you need
to dock with them. But I'm not writing that. That would however allow people
with a progeny or something to go do the ship docking. I think it's stupidly
annoying otherwise :)

Anyway, this is quite a way through the file cargo_mission.py (in the modules
directory.) Just comment out the stuff that's commented out. Bingo! Or you can
change the "if vsrandom.random()<=.5:" statement; change the .5 to a smaller
number (fraction of 1) to make it happen less, or make it equal to 1 to make
it always happen. (In other words, if you think you should be docking to ships
almost all the time, set it to .95 or something.)



else:
self.arrived=1
tempfac=self.faction
# if vsrandom.random()<=.5:
# tempfac=''
self.adjsys=go_somewhere_significant(self.you,1,100,not self.capship,tempfac)
capstr="planet"
dockstr="land"
# if tempfac=='':
# dockstr="dock"
# capstr="ship"
self.adjsys.Print("You must visit the %%s %s" % (capstr),"cargo mission",", docked around the %s",0)
VS.IOmessage(0,"cargo mission",self.mplay,"Once there, %s and we will transport the cargo off of your ship." % (dockstr))

You might what to try matching your velocity to the ship first with "Home" then a docking request "alt 0" now now try your approach it should be easier.

Enjoy the Choice

i just tried to dock with a ship a few minutes ago.... it didnt happen..
i was within that damned square (it should be a cube.. come on people.. 3d.. i dont know how close or far i have to be!)
well.. i flew through the square.. stopped in the square.. whatever.. hit the ship four times trying to get closer and closer..
i couldnt dock.

turned away and gave up shortly there after..

oh and.. matching speed.. nice idea.. except it failed, i ended up going a matched speed.. AWAY from the ship..

Neskiairti wrote:i just tried to dock with a ship a few minutes ago.... it didnt happen..
i was within that damned square (it should be a cube.. come on people.. 3d.. i dont know how close or far i have to be!)
well.. i flew through the square.. stopped in the square.. whatever.. hit the ship four times trying to get closer and closer..
i couldnt dock.

turned away and gave up shortly there after..

That was pretty much my experience. Matching speed just didn't seem to have much of any effect for me, but I can't speak as to why. I don't recall it going backwards (sounds to me like someone went to SPEC while you were trying to dock then... whether you or them I don't know)

And I definitely tried toggling SPEC while I was in the square to make sure I wasn't in SPEC somehow. I wasn't (before that anyway) ...

Anyway should it even be possible to dock with someone in SPEC? These ships always seem to go into SPEC right when I want to dock with them (or just as I approach, really.) I'm playing on medium difficulty (I hope those words didn't just mark me as a wuss or something) but I request docking clearance every time just to have good habits. I just started a fresh game and am amassing money with amazing slowness.

While I'm being negative, who do I plague with my opinions on the campaign? ;)

Anyway so far I have only had to go to bases and planets since my patch, never ships, so I'm considering myself a winner. I just have to figure out how to preserve my changes through SVN updates, now...

ive got the lovely problem with the campagn.. in 4.3 didnt the 'mission' say something like 'jump to x to find barnards star.' or some such?
now it just says 'jump to find barnards star'
well.. i hit a dozen systems, and couldnt find barnards star, and there isnt an easy map to use.. (atleast with the graphics problems im having... maybe if i get those fixed, ill find the navigation maps more useful..? heh)

yeah the ship mighta hit spec, i dunno, was utterly pissing me off trying to dock with it.. and it seemed that the green square just... wasnt working, i could be anywhere within it, and i wouldnt dock.

The docking and undocking system really needs to be improved..

maybe you request docking, and the ship uses a tractor beam to haul your ass in.. and you can only dock with ships that have heavy tractor beams.. and of size enough to hold your ship in their cargo bay.. (or if they have an 'external' dock)
defenately gotta make those docking areas cubes, (you have wireframe objects for the jump nodes! you can do it for the docking zones!) and when you undock, you sh ould be atleast 5 kilometers from the docking point.. just to make sure you dont hit anything.. (possibly a check installed to make sure you dont spawn inside/on top/behind/within/anywhere near another body of mass)

Neskiairti wrote:yeah the ship mighta hit spec, i dunno, was utterly pissing me off trying to dock with it.. and it seemed that the green square just... wasnt working, i could be anywhere within it, and i wouldnt dock.

The docking and undocking system really needs to be improved..

Well, it's at least worth discussing. It would be great to be tractored in - personally I can't imagine that in a universe like Vega Strike's in which capships regularly wipe out stations (I've been playing for maybe a couple weeks, and I've seen it happen three times. And I have been like, working and stuff too :) ... well I can't imagine that people operating stations would want a bunch of people flying around on their own OR around their station. If you just forget to move off before activating ASAP you hit many of the designs in many of the ships you could be flying. I guess I need to bind keys for sliding, I'm getting ready to try using shifting with my joystick. Can I use a button as a modifier?

good luck.. and i cant imagine why you couldnt use a modifyer button.. unless they are doing something weird, its just another form of input/button press.

I hope this doesn't sound too stupid, but how do I even find the ships to dock with.
I am usually able to find an ox or gleaner class ship from the flight group that my target belongs to. when I autopilot there, I usually also find some more ships, but so far I've never found the ship I was supposed to find.
I noticed that in the target list the ships are sorted by number and I relied on that.
are the target ships maybe somewhere else in the target list?
is there a target key that helps me find the mission critical ships? if not, could that be implemented?

Try Ctrl N to target mission craft (I think)

drinkypoo wrote:So I just went from 0.4.3 to SVN a couple days ago and the game is no longer fun for me because I can't seem to successfully dock with a mission-related ship. [...] Sorry, but chasing ships from star to star just isn't fun! It was much easier when ships held still.

IMHO it's just should be 2 different kinds of missions: time-fixed rendezvous ("arrive to that ship at this time and...") and free ("find that ship and..."). In first case they could give a bonus to contractor who arrived sooner and makes a deduction for delay (after all, time is money for merchants and blood for some other interested parties), in second more task difficulty could mean greater reward.
But anyway ship should not be treated like some static port or something.

drinkypoo wrote: If there were some meaningful communications system in which I could tell a vessel "I'm here with your cargo, could you stop?" and have them actually say "Yeah, I'll stop you so you can dock instead of having to try to ram your way into my cargo holds" then I wouldn't feel this way.

That would not harm either.