Alignment marks for Docking Port

[teatime]

I would like a large equilateral triangle marking on the docking ports to remind me of the correct orientation during docking (the arrows should line up). That is to remind me of what I intended to do. 

Edit 1-7-15, To expand on this, I docked a new part to my orbital station. I had the camera zoomed in close for the docking. After docking I zoomed the camera out and discovered the new part was on upside down and tilted off at an odd angle. Due to objects jutting out of the main station, I had to un-dock and back up a good distance, rotate the part and re-dock. Not much of a problem for most people. I, however, am really bad at docking. I would rate a 3 on a 10 point scale for my docking skill. My new station part had no RCS thrusters or reaction wheels due to poor planning. The tug was under powered and sluggish, add in my lack of skill and you have a long, unhappy time. A large physical marking on the docking port outer flange would be a visual reminder to rotate before completing docking.

Edited January 7, 2016 by teatime
clarification

[pandaman]

Not a bad idea, I quite like that.

The problem I can see with having the mark on the docking port part is that it may be difficult to get them lined up properly (or easy to forget to do) when building the ship, especially if you are building a ship that you want to dock with one already in orbit and can't remember where your mark was.

One workaround is to add something like a light (which will also help you to see when you try to  dock in the dark) to your ships which can serve as  alignment markers. You can add two lights to each ship to maintain symmetry and use the right click menu to change the colours, so red could be up and green down.

[Pthigrivi]

Also, is there any reason docking ports couldn't pull and snap to the nearest 45% when the magnets kick in? Is there any reason you wouldn't want them to? It be pretty handy to align modules and engines for doing funky orbital construction.

[sal_vager]

I'd kinda like to see something like the VAB snapping applied to docking, it's a system we already know so would be easy to use, just open a rotation gizmo on the docking port in flight, and toggle 5°, 15° and free movement.

[Silavite]

Is something like this what you are thinking of? (Apologies for using MS Paint) 

[KSK]

12 hours ago, sal_vager said:

I'd kinda like to see something like the VAB snapping applied to docking, it's a system we already know so would be easy to use, just open a rotation gizmo on the docking port in flight, and toggle 5°, 15° and free movement.

That would be great and it would certainly make large scale orbital construction less frustrating.

Would the rotation gizmo be applied to the docked vehicles?

[Reactordrone]

Alternatively you could have docking ports with something like the free pivot function on the claw so that you could unlock the ports and roll the sections into the desired alignment.

[sal_vager]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

Would the rotation gizmo be applied to the docked vehicles?

No idea

But it'd make sense to allow you to use the gizmo after docking any vessels to fine tune the angle, dock any old way to start, then rotate.

[KSK]

Agreed - seems like the simplest solution to me! I guess you could restrict the 'fine tuning' available via the gizmo, so that you need to dock in approximately the right orientation but that seems a bit unnecessary.

In gameplay terms, the player would still need to master rendezvous and docking - the gizmo would just take the tedium out of lining up your docking just-so. Seems like a good compromise to me.

 

Edited January 7, 2016 by KSK