Hey all, Somewhat cryptic title I know, but I'll explain... I tried something today that didn't work, due to known (colliders) reasons, but I think it could and indeed should be able to work within the current restrictions. Here's what happened... I'm just setting to leave Skillon for the last time, I've stripped my Base there, but left the structure largely intact, loading everything into my CV. Then I get an incoming meteorite warning (promethium!) so I go and find it. It's landed on the side of a steep cliff and I cannot readily get to it in an HV (it's dead basic) while landing the CV some distance away. So, I have an idea... I hover the CV flat, with the docking bay (rear) facing the meteorite. I then get out of the pilots seat and leave the CV hovering stationary while I walk to the docking bay. In the docking bay, I enter the HV and undock. Now, what I hoped would happen, given the CV wasn't moving was that I'd be able to fly the HV out of the bay, mine the Asteroid and come back. What actually happened was different. The instant the HV undocked - it's NOT touching the CV at this point - the CV insta-flipped. Literally, it did not roll, it was just instantly almost perfectly upside down. This caused the HV to partially clip into the CV and throw it around, the controls became unresponsive to any input at this point. So, the HV has dead controls and cannot be moved. I managed (lots of jet pack) back to the Bridge and jump in the Pilots seat. However, the CV is totally unresponsive (even if I power it off it doesn't fall) due to the undocked vessel aboard. I recovered from this using God Mode, getting the HV largely by luck to move and the docking pads to briefly touch the ceiling of the CV's docking bay, locking it down. I could then correct the CV orientation. So, I get why this didn't work given the games limitations with colliders and moving vessels. However, the CV was stationary. This got me to thinking that could there be a "park" mode implemented. Where a CV (or other vessel) with adequate lift to hold a hover, gets "locked" into a special state. I.e. the game treats it like it's landed on the ground so it's solid and not quirky when it comes to physics. I think this would be GREAT for deploying vessels from a CV while the CV hovers, great in MP. Of course, any disruption to the CV's ability to hover (fuel / damage) needs to be catered for. But, treating a hovering - but stationary - CV as "landed" doesn't seem a huge leap. To be clear, on foot I could run around the CV without issue of course. However, simply undocking the HV totally broke physics even before the HV and CV clipped into each other. What do people think? I thought this might work as is, considering the CV wasn't moving, but the landed stationary and flying stationary states appear to be very different. Of course, in space the CV is flying, but stationary and it all works just fine. So it seems possible for planetary environments.
My understanding is that the act of undocking applied some momentum (maybe even zero, but still, a corresponding function call was made), which made the CV not stationary, which in turn replaced it's stationary collider (concave and accurate) with a non-stationary one (convex and simplified), which caused an overlap and physics going insane. I think that was a strange occurrence, it really should have worked like you expected in the scenario you described. When the CV is stationary on the ground (not docked), it lets HVs/SVs to interact with it no problem – so I think that some kind of 'Park Mode' is implemented already, just for the vehicles 'parked' on the ground.
This frustrates me often on multiplayer servers, and I would love to see a "park" move which keeps the CV stationary.
Yes, I think this would be most useful in Multi-Player. I'm playing alone, yet it would be useful to me from time to time. @akimzav - no doubt you're right, some weird physics is going on. It is broken though, based on the massive CV insta-flipping like it did. I do hope Eleon one day get to the bottom of the colliders stuff, well, I suspect they're aware of what needs doing but it's a big job. While us who've played for a while would welcome it, I suspect it's perhaps not a feature that would draw in newer players, like some of the more visually appealing suggestions
This is typical and expected behavior in multiplayer. Never get out of the pilot seat of any ship unless it is firmly planted on the ground. Never attempt to dock or undock any ship from any other ship if anyone is still sitting in a seat in the ship that is being docked to. Some of these may show up in single player too but they are common occurrences in multiplayer.
Yeah, I'm doing this in single-player just seems a shame that a parked (stationary) ship - albeit still flying - doesn't behave the same as when on the ground or in space. I mean, I'd expect a ship in flight, but not moving, to be the same in space as it is on a planet really when it comes to colliders. I guess there's more going on here though.
That use to be a thing, and people would paralyze massive CV's with tiny SV's and it caused many PvP tears and was "fixed".
I've had more than one powered-down CV go buck wild while trying to swap out its small craft. I design my CVs with docking ports. It's just a flat section with a door, and perhaps one or two small docking nagels for guidance. This fits flush against a cross-shaped docking pylon on a station. In space, this allows me to park the CV right against the station so I can just walk between the two, even without a suit on. If I could parking brake a CV in place, I could do this on planets as well. Imagine a tall wharf tower with docking pylons branching from it, CVs hanging off them like leaves. Since the CVs aren't docked to the station, you wouldn't even need to worry about factions. A perfect structure to build a free trading port around.
Edit: Ah... zombie thread from 2017. Yes it was fixed (probably years ago) I have no problems docking and undocking from CVs that are hovering in atmosphere.
Not an old thread, I posted it a week ago. I'm playing single player and it's not working for me, hence the post. Perhaps SVs behave differently to HVs in this scenario? To be 100% clear, when undocking an HV from a CV hovering on a planet, physics goes nutty, tossing the CV and HV around as if they have no mass. Landed CV totally fine, CV in space totally fine. It'd be nice if this worked especially in MP where multiple people might be on that CV. We of course know we cannot move around on a moving CV - or a CV that thinks it's moving, see disabled patrol vessels - but we can walk around fine on a hovering CV. Logically, as this works, it's not a huge leap to expect to be able to enter a docked vessel in this state. I thought I'd managed to do this in the past, but perhaps I'm just not remembering things correctly.
Yeah, I think I must've read someone's join date mistakenly. My bad. Well, in my current SP career, I can tell you I have a CV hovering in atmosphere and I'm docking undocking SVs with no problems. Granted, have not tried an HV while hovering yet. Haven't really come across a situation where I would need to though either.
Not so long ago I got into the following situation: I am sitting in the pilot's seat of my CV - the CV is on the ground, my partner in the mining SV flies into the hangar and docks with the CV, but remains in the cockpit. I get up from the pilot's seat and my CV begins to rotate, gradually flying away from the landing site. I switch to godmode and for 15 minutes I try to get back into the CV pilot's seat, the CV rotates all this time, my partner laughs, I swear and try to compensate for the rotation somehow to get to the seat. After I sat back in my chair, CV instantly freezes in place. P.S. what can I say? It's Empyrion
I thought I'd successfully flown an SV out and back in to a hovering CV, but I don't know what game version that would have been. HVs flat don't work for me though. It must be some game state with the game saying "I'm on the ground, so this is ok" sort of thing, which is a bit weird. Stationary on the ground or stationary in the air, I'd not expect to make any difference. Indeed, hovering in the air if often more stable than being touched down, if the ground isn't very even. I guess it's linked to the "event" that causing landing gear to deploy, causing something to change in the physics interactions. I've had the same @Mirosya - though I was playing alone at the time. Had to resort to God Mode but, rather than readily clipping through the CV, I appeared to gain near infinite mass and knock it flying. Weird physics.
I don't think you need to make any excuses for how colliders work blah blah - what you did seems perfectly reasonable and absolutely should have worked with zero issues. That fact that it didn't just means this is still very buggy and rather than this post, it should simply have been a posted to the bugs section along with all the other unfixed (and probably never to be fixed) ship orientation/movement etc issues. I do hope to come back to this one day when it is vaguely worthy of being labelled as a 'release' product, but the months and years roll by and nothing seems to change in this respect.
Last night in the span of an hour I had my SV stop colliding (I could fly through terrain and the drone base we were attacking), had our CV start tipping sideways and begin to float up into the air (with thrusters off) when I tried to dock my SV to it (after fixing the no-collision issues by relogging), had the CV flip out when my brother tried docking to it, had my SV dock to the CV hovering a meter off the floor (normally it needs to lay flat). And this was on a very powerful server with a save less than 2 weeks old.
Something definitely changed around the 1.6 or 1.7 release. It seems that every patch comes with a signature bug, and one of those made this whole crazy collision issue manifest a heck of a lot more. I know that what you described used to work. I recall in vanilla SP hovering my CV in the air with its hangar door facing a weapons emplacement, locking the hangar door open, and then hopping into a small HV with an artillery turret. The goal was to use the height of the CV to get extra ballistic distance on the shells, and it worked great. Now, it's like a stopped CV is no longer anchored in place. At random times if you nudge it slightly with another ship the CV will just start floating away like it's made of paper. Just today I docked a CV to my carrier deck, warped to a new star, and when I pulled the CV off the carrier it apparently decided the two were slightly intertwined (some shifting may occur during warping?) and the CV flipped over while the carrier started drifting away in the other direction. Had to chase it down with my jetpack, turn the thrusters back on, and steady it. And no, I have not been able to reliably reproduce this in order to file a bug report. So far it's...random. Sometimes docking/undocking works great. Other times one or both ships have a conniption and you've got a herding cats minigame on your hands.
