Gasmines unable to dock at

[Moganite]

I don't think its my piloting ability of lack thereof but I am finding it impossible to dock at a gas mine with a plowshare in ver 0.5. Even creeping up to the station at 1 m per second results in myself blowing up. I would of expected to be able to dock a plowshare at a gasmine as I can everywhere else even at 250 m/s in some instances. will gas mines only accept fighters or something this is rather odd as you would expect a mine to primarily ship bulk goods.

[parkel]

erm... have u checked that the hole for you to go into the docking place suits the size of plowshare?

or..

have u even checked that ur ship is not too close to someplace which the plowshare (unfortunately) crashed into?

[Moganite]

er yes one time i actually did get a fair distance into the docking bay. from a flat approach to the docking bay I appear to always be a a certain distance from the green square. They are all figheter sized docking squares

Apart from the station there was nothing else there in all attempts and no projection into my path that i could see that would be a problem entering the docking bay.

the only other thing that could do that would another ship and from inside the cockpit i couldn't see anything. from that viewpoint as far as ships are concerned.

So what are the dimensions of both the plowshare and the docking bays in this instance.

If at all possible I would get some screen shots but it may take a while before i find another gas mine only ever seen one and its atleast 4 jumps to get there at the moment.

[parkel]

i cant give u the exact dimensions for a plowshare.
but its absurd to say this: a gasmine is bigger than a plowshare by a lot.

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try to slow down when making ur approach. not like 1m/s.
make it 20-30m/s when docking.

jus keep spamming d when u r close to the docking square...
till u dock.

[CLoneWolf]

If you still see the whole green square box when you try to dock, you're not inside it yet. Don't let the inner control tower scare you; despite it may look like you're about to crash into it, go very carefully forward as parkel suggests, and try to dock again right after getting past the box lines. Point your nose at the box center and you won't touch the walls.

[Moganite]

Thank now to find a gas mine to try it on. still could take a while in an area where i havn't seen any space stations for several systems in purist space too many areans .

[Zebedee]

I've found the problems with gasmines is actually getting out... some of those docking bays are so narrow (with a Llama) that as soon as you launch, you hit the base and then trigger all sorts of aggro from the base defences. Nasty stuff as you've absolutely no control of how you're going to leave. Fortunately, a restart and load tends to launch you a fair distance away and avoids this.

[CLoneWolf]

Right after undocking, do not touch your thrusters at all; stay at speed 0 and spin around until you face the safe way out; gas mine docks have guiding lights, use em to your advantage.
If the outside panorama blends too much with the inner walls and you can't find the exit, face the inner control tower, then either spin by 180 degrees and go, or keep facing the tower and use the reverse thrusters.

[Zebedee]

Sadly I actually meant that I was finding this to be the case at speed 0. I think it might be because of rotation (whether of the gasmine or due to not correcting rotation of your own ship prior to docking). There's certainly no hope of doing anything once you've selected launch whatever the cause is. The only thing I can rule out totally is me touching anything after hitting launch

Good tips though for people struggling to find the exit.

[CLoneWolf]

Ouch! Well yes then, the only thing left to try is docking with speed matched with the station, perfectly leveled and at speed 0 already before hitting d to dock; this should "help" the station dragging your ship along in sync if that's the problem; if even that won't help, it might be a sort of bug, but maybe related to the angular velocity of the gas mine; it'd be interesting to check that value, if possible, and find the troublesome threshold...

[Zebedee]

I'll bug report it properly should it happen again (just got SVN up and running so having to start again). From what I recall, the approach angle for docking was an odd one and not really straight - your idea on angular velocity makes a lot of sense to me as I don't tend to match speeds (although I'm learning to do this more often now). Impossible to replicate though because after the initial launch, subsequent reloads place you well outside of the problem and obviously getting the exact flight path from an earlier save is impossible.

I'll definitely follow your advice for docking in gas mines in future though. Really hate quit/reloading unless absolutely necessary.

[athomic1]

Actually, something slight related is docking with some capships. A couple of times, I went to dock with a Hawking, but while it stopped to permit me to approach, it kept slowly rotating. Problem is, a Hawking's docking points are recessed off the center of rotation, so the docking zone itself keeps moving. You CAN dock at speed, but departure is pretty much a guaranteed KLANGG!!

I did actually manage to get away from my first Hawking with little or no damage (gotta love heavy armor and shields!). The second one I tried... not so lucky. They really DO get pissed if you can't get clear fast enough! In any case, I'd like to suggest a revision to the AI, or whatever, so that when I ship stops to permit docking, it also stops, like, turning?