Almost on accident, I've figured out how to take advantage of the acquireForce/docking port magnetism, and animated colliders, to make docking ports soft-dock before they hard dock. Both the Apollo and the Soyuz "soft-dock" before they hard dock. In KSP, the advantage to soft-docking before hard-docking, is that you can rotate your spacecraft to the desired orientation, before you commit to a hard-dock, and join the spacecraft together. Real Life and In-Game Demonstrations Scrub to 17:52 in