I recommend that new pilots LEARN TO DOCK IN THE SLOTS. It is a coming of age ritual that you should have to experience. Just do it. Yes, it's embarrassing. The docking control operators will make fun of you. I took about five minutes just to get through the damn slot the first time I tried to dock my Sidewinder. The next day I found a stenciled outline of a mail slot with a red 'X' over it painted on the hull near my hatch.
Inside the cockpit I found a box of adult diapers.
You never know when you might find yourself in a ship that does not yet have a docking computer, so you need to be prepared. Stick with it until you can do it. It's the responsible thing to do for your ship, and, if your ship is big enough, for the passengers you might carry who do not respond well to hull damage.
Some recommendations for good manual docking:
1. Slow down. You need a little speed just to match the station's velocity as you approach the slot and rotate to line up with it. You have to keep rotating your ship to match the station's rotation rate. As soon as you get lined up and into the slot itself, throttle back. A slower approach to your pad is going to give you time to line up.
2. Deploy your landing gear. That's right. I said it. Kind of hard to land without the gear. Deploying gear also helps you slow down.
3. Just use roll thrusters to line up. As soon as you clear the slot, find your landing pad, and use your roll stick to align the bottom of your ship to the pad. Try not to pitch up or down yet. If you don't see your pad number right away when you enter the station, pop out to the camera suite and see if it is below your line of sight. Then pop back in and make adjustments.
4. Use vertical jets to lower the ship down. As you approach the pad, use your vertical jets to move the ship straight down toward the pad, rather than pitching the nose down. If you have only used your roll and vertical thrusters, your alignment to the pad should be in pretty good shape at this point. Some cockpits don't provide a downward view, so a little pitch forward might be necessary to see where you are going. (or the camera suite)
5. Slow down some more. When you are over the pad, you should be moving very slowly as you move forward and down.
6. Use the docking HUD. The docking HUD kicks in when you get close and shows your ship's alignment to the docking pad, along with the bulls eye for hitting the mark. It is very helpful. If you hit the deck, but have gone too far and missed the mark, just go with the embarrassing sizzle-slide on the deck. That's right, bitches. Just testin' my shields. Nothin' to see here. Reverse your thrusters and try to slide back to the bulls eye to lock in the landing.
After you are able to dock without embarrassment, buy yourself a docking computer.
There are plenty of pilots who scoff at those of us who use docking computers. Ignore them. A docking computer is cheap, and if you are not good at docking, it will save you time.
Objections pilots give to using docking computer:
- It takes up a valuable internal ship slot. True. If you don't have space for it, don't buy one.
- It wastes time, especially in high traffic systems. Yes, if you continually go to a station with a high volume of traffic, then your docking computer obediently puts you in the queue. If you want to be impatient, you can always keep the throttle set at speed and guide the ship in the slot yourself. The docking computer only takes over at zero throttle.
Version 2.4 Update: If you have not tried the docking computer since 2.4 was released, you might want to revisit it. It is MUCH FASTER at putting ships on the deck now. My current docking method is to request docking, but keep the throttle up and pilot manually into the slot. This helps avoid any queue delays that might happen. Then I throttle back once I'm in the station and the docking computer gets the ship landed faster than I could manually.
With my Voice Attack interface, I get within 7.5 clicks of a station, then just say two commands to Eden:
1. "Request docking" [wait for confirmation and pad number]
2. "Stop engines."
When you throttle back the engines to zero, the docking computer takes over. While the computer takes care of getting me into the station, I can enter the camera suite to get nice views of my ship entering the slot and landing. Or I can look at my pilot stats, or research my next mission. It also gives me time to take a quick piss before I let the passengers out of their cabins and fawn over them as they exit my ship. Got to have those good pilot reviews on Galnet.
I'm going to have to agree with the "Only pussies use the docking computer" crowd, but not because I think I'm a great pilot, rather that it makes you lazy. Even if you are a law-abiding pilot you will almost inevitably need to dock stealthily at some point and if you are reliant on the computer in an emergency you will soon be staring at a rebuy screen.
ReplyDeleteI was caught out only a few days ago when I didn't read the fine print on one of my VIP passengers - turns out this "Rich Tourist" with an otherwise impeccable resume was actually a corporate embezzler wanted in multiple systems. I was most surprised to see "WANTED PASSENGER" pop up on my HUD as I got in range of ITO Orbital. An Anaconda is hardly a stealth ship and I had no chaff or heatsinks equipped that might help avoid scans, so I just carefully lined up my approach about 10km out, maxed throttle until 7.5km where I requested docking, then hit boost! Just before sliding through the mailslot I put 4 pips to systems and dropped my throttle to about 50%. A scan had started but I was in before it could complete. I overshot my landing pad, which was one right at the front of the station, but was easily able to come to a complete stop before splatting on the rear walls. This is something you just cant do with a docking computer.
Some other tips:
Keep your speed just below 100 m/s inside or near the station. Any collision is YOUR fault, at least in the eyes of station traffic control. Above 100 m/s, you'll incur a fine for the tiniest bump. If you crush a sidewinder against the walls of the mailslot and it explodes, the station guns will open fire on YOU. In Open play, various human commanders may attempt to exploit this mechanic, as the rebuy for them in the sidewinder is trivial, but you can lose many millions. If your speed is below the 100 limit, you'll just get a "Reckless flying will not be tolerated" voiceover. Fines also make many VIP passengers very unhappy.
2 tips for landing: If you fly flat and level above your assigned pad at about the height of the holographic pad numbers, then stop forward movement just as the numbers start to fade out you will find you are pretty close to dead center above the pad. You can then drop down to the surface without using your thruster controls, by quickly toggling on and off "Flight assist" for brief moments to gently ease on down to the pad. (Actually this may not work on Outposts, but should be fine in rotating stations and definitely planet surface landings.)
Deploying landing gear (almost certainly) doesn't "slow you down", exactly. What it does is reduce your ship's max speed, which means that flight assist will fire your forward thrusters to reduce your speed to the new maximum. A similar effect can be had by moving all pips out of engines into shields and weapons. Most cargo ships have a top speed less than 100 m/s with 0 pips to engines - sometimes handy to know!