Waddle

Well, after quite a few more attempts docking I haven't had the problem again, so I haven't seen the issue on 1.4.1 yet. Quietly optimistic that some random change in this version may have sorted it

I'm fairly new to KSP having only bought it a number of months ago. I'd like to say a big thanks to the team for creating a truly brilliant game. I've only clocked about 130 hours and feel as though I've barely scratched the suface. There are very few games that are such good value for money. Cheers

I've only had time to try a couple more dockings since my last post and I haven't had the issue again, but it's maybe a bit soon to give it the thumbs up . As soon as I have another few tries I'll report back. I notice a few other posts on here saying that 1.4.1 might still be suffering the issue and that it may be in earlier versions too. For me it was definitely an issue only after the 1.4.0 upgrade, but that doesn't mean others don't have it in other versions. Maybe it's totally random or linked to some particular port / ship configuration......?

Thanks Zeiss Ikon and KevinW42 for the additional tips on docking / lining up. Haven't had much KSP time since my last post but I'll deffo try them out.

This sounds promising. Do you think 1.4.1 might have sorted this?

The docking ports are definitely the correct way around :-) It's not so much that the ship(s) bounce, they get flicked away (usually into a spin) as if something's given them a real bash. I do use the nav ball and as you say you can pretty much connect the ports without ever looking at the ships. Because of the 1.4.0 issue though I now need to make sure that everything is as parallel as it can be - from what I can tell the nav ball shows you direction to target and where your velocity vector is, but not "alignment" as such? The way things are at the mo' if I'm just a couple of degrees off parallel with a large ship it's a no go.....

You might be right there. I've tried with a number of ship sizes docking to the same space station and the smaller and lighter they are the less I have the problem. The worst one is a 75t Eve manned ship that is a nightmare now since the patch. It wasn't a problem before. What I'm doing now is getting to about 10m away and then holding. I then rotate the view around and use RCS to get as close to lined up as I can. I'm running stock so no mods or anything. When I'm happy it looks good I thrust forward slowly. When I'm close enough that the ports start to attract I use some reverse RCS to smooth the dock. Only tried this a few times but it seems to help. Still a pain though :-( Clearly something has changed ..... Oh yes, I always turn SAS off a couple of metres out too (did this before the patch too).

I've definitely got this docking issue too. I'm no expert by any means but I'm not too bad at docking. On 1.3 if you were a little bit off the ships just bounced a little and then settled as the ports attracted each other. I've tried about 10 docks since the update and unless I'm bang on, my ship ends up being flicked away with quite some force. The issue is severe enough that it even spins the space station I'm docking with with some force. Neither the ship or station is small.....