#My ship is taking more damage than seems reasonable, from docking, I think.

47 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

lone ether
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I recently completely restored the structural elements of my entire ship, but after docking twice, my entire ship is already at about 80-90% condition. I docked once with a derelict at ~0.8m/s, and with another derelict at ~1.4m/s, then took this screenshot.

I do not accelerate or decelerate quickly, usually sticking to 0.5-0.7G of thrust.

Notably, containers, furniture, and loose items are not damaged.

Surely it isn't intentional that ships are supposed to degrade this quickly?

screenshot_2.jpg
sand solstice
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I'm having this problem as well.

thick pivot
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I've stopped seeing damage when docking if I use "match speed" to get to perfect 0'd speed delta and less than 100m

lone ether
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Yeah I've slowed down to under 0.25m/s and there's a lot less wear and tear today

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That's a much lower safe docking velocity than seems intuitive to me, if I'm being honest. But I guess it was just a skill issue on my part.

honest granite
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and yet the AI can drive like madmen and dock at crazy speeds and no dmg.

steep sequoia
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I noticed that when my ship accelerates faster than 0.3G then a noise appears like my hull is cracking. So now I always move slower.
I read somewhere that save speed for docking is 20m/s so now I dock slower.

It seems like it solved an issue. Except when police or pirates are docking you, it always damages the ship.

Of course, this is not a pleasant way to play a game like this. And it seems wrong: declared dock limit at 100m/s but real is 20m/s. Declared acceleration limit is a few G but real limit is 0.3G.

lone ether
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Yeah I guess it's somewhat random.

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And I can't stress enough how lame that is

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I just docked at a whopping 0.04 meters per second from ~5 meters away

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And my entire ship turned pink in the damage visor

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This is either a bug, or just really awful design.

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my ship definitley should not be taking this much damage from docking with another ship at a literal snails pace

image.png
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totally artificial busywork. let me avoid the busywork by docking slowly for gods sake

thick pivot
steep sequoia
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My best suggestion as a quick fix would be to add a hull damage coefficient for big ships. The bigger the ship, the smaller the damage.
I remember hull damage was not a problem at all for me at the beginning. But now my team of 4 has to spend like 20 minutes real time with 16x speed to repair all parts.

honest granite
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Too much thrust. Aka lots of thrusters, actually can cause this. Your basically tearing your ship structure apart from it. This is not a big ship. Drop to like 3 thursters and see what happens. A dev dropped into a stream and reported that's what can happen. it's just not clear.

lone ether
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I only have 6

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Surely 6 isn't too many for a ship this size?

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I guess I can drop it down to 4 or 5

honest granite
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Test it. It shouldn't be, but if it does then something could have changed.

lone ether
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Once I'm at the next suitable derelict for a refit/expansion, I'll drop down to 4 thrusters

thick pivot
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No just manage your thrust, keep your change of Gs to less than .2

lone ether
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Alright, so 4 thrusters is definitely too few. While 0.68G of max thrust is enough for most purposes, it's definitely not enough for emergency manouvers.

I really hope it's not the thrusters causing the damage, because I'm gonna bump up to 8-12

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I want my ship to at least be able of pulling 2Gs

thick pivot
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I can go up to 5 Gs in my ship not really seeing damage so long as I don't jerk (hull creeking sounds - quick change of .2Gs or more causes this). I just lower the thrust back to zero using slider before releasing thrust.

lone ether
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I really don't think it's the amount of thrust I usually use

thick pivot
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again it is the jerk of the accel, not the accel

kindred dagger
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I'm gonna log this so we can take a closer look and the damage sources, to see if they need tuning.

But I think @thick pivot has it right: the primary source of damage (apart from collisions) is change of acceleration. A sudden+large change in acceleration is a lot like a collision.

My guess here is that one or both of the following are turning your ships "pink" after a dock:

  • Each maneuver (tap of a key) you make degrades the ship a little, proportional to the change in acceleration.
  • The change in acceleration between free-floating and docked also caused damage.

So if you wanted to minimize damage when docking, you would:

  1. Dock with as close to 0 VREL as possible.
  2. Use the lowest possible acceleration (a.k.a. Gs) to maneuver into position.
  3. Use the fewest possible maneuvers.
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Note that 2 and 3 can be optimized further, by using one long maneuver to slow down instead of several smaller ones.

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But we can still take a look at some of the thresholds the game uses here, to see if they're too low.

solar granite
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I wouldn't like it if we need to dock to a station with close to 0 VREL, in that it could take a long time even at x16 speed.

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10 m/s VREL to 15 m/s VREL feels like a good compromise to me.

lone ether
bronze lagoon
# kindred dagger I'm gonna log this so we can take a closer look and the damage sources, to see i...

I ran into this; my problem was that with a larger ship, the amount of damage becomes infeasible to maintain, even with a crew on constant repair duty because basically every single tile gets hit every time; because total damage appears to be based on dock/on accel, there's no way to avoid it by going slow: 2 doesn't work because the total damage is the same- it's scaled to total applied velocity.

Accel slower, burn longer for the same damage.

Could the damage be scaled to not hit 50-70% of the ship every time? A flat, lower percentage- possibly focusing on already damaged tiles? A wall breaking on a long burn is way more interesting than needing to repair 100% of the ship sliiightly.

rough tide
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agreed, and it doesn't make sense for an entire ship to suffer minor damage

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like any kind of joined material, a ship will break at its weakest point

lucid tiger
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There should be a tolerance below which damage is not taken, docking at 10mps shouldn't be an issue I think (though it is ~20mph) the big magclamps should buffer most of that when docking. Perhaps you're docking at too slow a speed and the calculations are getting confused - that kind of thing happens. Maybe also the size of ship you dock with should count, crash into a small ship it takes more of the damage, but you take more against a big brick wall.

bronze lagoon
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I didn't notice any difference between sub-1 m/s and ~90-95 m/s.

rough tide
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ive been docking at 20 m/s

solar granite
thick pivot
lucid tiger
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You already have a throttle control. I set it to 3rd bar from the bottom and get very little damage, along with minimal, if any, creaking (which is the real reason I do it)

lone ether
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I would pay for special RCS thrusters that have regulated thrust

bronze lagoon
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Or a multitile support beam that “absorbed” the damage.

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It’s the entire ship getting 1% damage that eats the autotask time.

thick pivot