Dock on stations in the sol system

Xante · Post by **Xante** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 10:15 am

Help! I can't dock on stations in the sol system, they are to fast! I can't even match my velocity with them. And SPEC doesn't work either since the speed decreases when approaching. The only way I found to dock is to approach them from the direction they fly to in orbit.

Why is Sol the only system where the Stations fly in the orbit like crazy?!

Post by **ace123** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 10:45 am

It's a custom crafted system, and as the engine changes, Sol might not be updated to reflect those changes.

Maybe all other systems have a different time scale than Sol.

I would suggest just ignoring Sol except for admiring our solar system from space.

Coragem · Post by **Coragem** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 10:45 am

I hacked a save to sol system to test this, and yes the orbits are kinda fast, i did managed to dock, with dificulty using a Slicke very light on mass so i guess with a big ship it could really be kinda hard / impossible. Might test more tonight.

Xante · Post by **Xante** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:15 pm

But even if they are fast, assuming their velocity is constant, if you match your velocity with that of the station, you should be able to dock?! But it is impossible to match velocity, if I stop my engines, the station flees.

Coragem · Post by **Coragem** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:40 pm

I dont know, if i match velocity with the station Home key. my velocity indicator starts jumping around and does not stable. if i do 0 speed relative to the station and later go full power foward i can dock with some dificulty.
i do think something is not right. just dont know what. i'm using a light fighter so i dont know if a big trading ship would manage to dock. i'll try sometime later today.

Post by **ace123** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:15 am

I'm still not sure what causes this... I suspect the physics frames for certain units only happening every so often could be the reason

Definitely a bug

Coragem · Post by **Coragem** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 2:19 am

Just for information, i did test with a not soo full Llamma, and didnt even manage to get near the station.
Good to know it probably a bug.

Post by **jackS** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 4:13 am

jittering with match velocity would appear to happen with all orbiting objects. Matching velocity with Ataraxia in the starting system (moving much slower than the objects in Sol, but moving nonetheless) will produce a noticeable jitter in the readout. Clearly, however, the match-velocity function should be smart enough to match orbits (admittedly, an orbit implies a constantly changing velocity) as well as it can match linear velocities, although this will likely need to be special cased to keep synchronized with the updates to orbiting objects.

That objects are moving rapidly in Sol is intentional. Sol has been our test system for scaling both sizes and velocities. Orbital velocities for the planets in Sol are actually greatly scaled down from their actual values, and still present the user with noticeable gameplay issues. That's why the orbits in Cephid_17 are glacially slow -- we don't yet have a convenient and intuitive user experience for transitioning between vastly different reference frames.

Post by **ace123** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 7:55 am

I was thinking it should automatically set your velocity reference to the closest significant object that is not in SPEC (planet, starship)

However the code doesn't have the infrastructure set up to allow that. I think velocities as the engine sees them don't directly correspond to changes in position.

This shows up especially in network games (The clients have absolute control over their position and velocity, and the server blindly listens to them, so if there is lag or the clients suddenly change position, the frame of reference will get off by a lot.

Orbits are also done the same way, I believe. They update the position, not the velocity.

Xante · Post by **Xante** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 9:20 am

Nevertheless, if I insist long enough to get to that station, by SPECing behind, flying in fight-mode and time-compressing, after a while, the engine's getting nuts and makes the station trembling as a cocktail-shaker. And this can't be undone by unSPECing, slowing down and time-decompression. Then I really have to quit trying to dock.

By the way, yesterday evening, I managed to dock to earth. I didn't tryed for a long time since I couldn't approach to less than 1050 km. So I docked... nothing interesting there by the way... and when I launched, I couldn't leave further than... 1050 km!! I was stuck there, and I was so foolish saving game on earth. I tried however to reload, but didn't expect much... but then it worked, I leaved earth normally!

I doubt anyone has an explanation for this, right?