What went wonky with docking???

[Loren Pechtel]

I had to rescue the crew off a bird in low Kerbin orbit.

I let Mechjeb fly the docking maneuver.  The autopilot cut out with the two ships nose to nose centimeters apart and both were wobbling back and forth--at most 10cm of wobble.  I checked, neither had SAS turned on--what in the world could be causing them to wobble?  I fired up the browser to ask about this mess when suddenly they docked--no control inputs, Mechjeb was not flying either ship.

Huh??????

[Snark]

Gameplay question moved to Gameplay Questions.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Docking ports attract each other at close range like magnets.

Often this can result in a sort of wobble as one port chases the other, similar to SAS over correcting on small ships.

Nothing to be alarmed about.

[Loren Pechtel]

4 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Docking ports attract each other at close range like magnets.

Often this can result in a sort of wobble as one port chases the other, similar to SAS over correcting on small ships.

Nothing to be alarmed about.

So they can wiggle for ~2 minutes??

[Borsek]

yup, turn on sas on one of them and let the other wiggle into position

[jwbrase]

I find it can be good to cycle SAS on and off: You start to get a feel for what kind of wiggles happen during docking and which types are made worse or better by SAS.

[Loren Pechtel]

26 minutes ago, Borsek said:

yup, turn on sas on one of them and let the other wiggle into position

Sounds like a good idea.

[bewing]

Actually, they can wiggle forever. If you watch a ship all alone in high orbit with SAS turned off, it'll wiggle around quite a bit. I think it has to do with how each part is considered as a separate object when calculating the physics.

[Loren Pechtel]

43 minutes ago, bewing said:

Actually, they can wiggle forever. If you watch a ship all alone in high orbit with SAS turned off, it'll wiggle around quite a bit. I think it has to do with how each part is considered as a separate object when calculating the physics.

Yeah, I think the game overdoes it with physics calculations.  If you're not under power or in atmosphere why is there any reason to calculate the parts separately??