docked & undocked modes on docking ports

[katateochi]

Suggestion: Enable docking ports to have docked and undocked modes which can be toggled between.  "docked" works just as they do now, "undocked" means they stay physically attached at the port, but remain as separate craft.  Just like you can do currently with KAS winches. 

Those of you who played before 0.18.0 might remember the ErkleWarpClamp mod (all hail) which was the only way to dock before docking ports were added to the stock game.  One of the differences between the Erkle implementation and the stock one is that with Erkle clamps the two craft could remain as separate craft (but you could still transfer resources between them).  

Having the two docked craft as independent craft did have some advantages.  When you have a very large (or massive) station and you dock a tiny little run-about craft to it, it can sometimes be hard to get the camera to look at the tiny docked craft as it's focused on the center of mass of the whole station (yes you can pan, but it's a bit clunky).  With the Erkle clamps you could still switch between the docked craft as if they were separate and this made doing things around different modules on a station much nicer and easier.  But this isn't the main reason I'm making this suggestion (it's just an added benefit).

 

The main reason behind this suggestion is the upcoming 1.1 release and the prospect of multi-threading, with separate craft being run in separate threads.  

With or without multi-threading it won't make any difference to large stations as they will still be a single craft and therefore processed in a single thread.  BUT what if you could have docking ports that could be set to "undocked" mode?  Then you could have modules attached to your station but which remain as separate craft as far as the game is concerned.  If this could work, it might make it possible to multi-thread a station and have its different modules processed in different threads.  

Thoughts?

 

[pandaman]

I like the idea of this, being able to have docked ships still be different vessels could be quite handy.

However I'm not sure how possible or practical it could be to be multi thread two craft that are physically connected.  I think this is a different issue to whether the game can treat them as separate craft from a gameplay standpoint.

[capran]

4 hours ago, katateochi said:

it can sometimes be hard to get the camera to look at the tiny docked craft as it's focused on the center of mass of the whole station (yes you can pan, but it's a bit clunky).

 

 

Maybe what's needed is just better camera control or AI. I'm frustrated by the camera at times as well.

[Tantalus]

A bit off topic, but for your issue with large bases / stations and getting a special part into camera view, there's a mod^(TM).
It is called camera focus changer and i dont want to miss it since i know of its existence.

Regards

Tantalus

[katateochi]

44 minutes ago, pandaman said:

However I'm not sure how possible or practical it could be to be multi thread two craft that are physically connected.  I think this is a different issue to whether the game can treat them as separate craft from a gameplay standpoint.

Agreed! As I was writing this I knew there was a distinct possibility that it wouldn't be possible! Two craft sitting next to each other should (?) be able to run in separate threads, but a physical connection does mean a shared resource (even if all that is is data about position/rotation etc) so it won't be thread safe. 

17 minutes ago, capran said:

Maybe what's needed is just better camera control or AI. I'm frustrated by the camera at times as well.

true that.

5 minutes ago, Tantalus said:

A bit off topic, but for your issue with large bases / stations and getting a special part into camera view, there's a mod^(TM).
It is called camera focus changer and i dont want to miss it since i know of its existence.

Regards

Tantalus

ah nice 1, that will be helpful, thanks!

[mattinoz]

So if aspects of physics can't be multi-thread could there be a simplified physics main thread to handle those aspects?

Simplify each craft (or craft section) to a sausage shape that has the minimal amount of info needed to participate in this craft co-ordinator main-thread. In much the same way cargo bays make a simplified part. So basically location, collision, docking and resource transfer. Then do all the more aggressive physics on sub-threads for each craft section.