How's multi-dock working these days?

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Thinking about precision orbital construction. There used to be talk of using 4 clampotrons on a quad adapter as a "square" docking port. But if I recall it only "docked" one of the 4,  which would be a weak connection.

I've been thinking of putting a Jr. to one side of a Sr. as a guide. Just far enough back so the Jr.s would never connect, but I'm thinking they would force the Sr.s into horizontal alignment. 

Has there been any improvement in this lately, either in construction methods or perhaps in the game engine?

[Mister Dilsby]

Kerbfleet's K.S.S. Intrepid presently has its two largest craft multi-port docked; I put them aboard before I made the jump to 1.1, and I'm pretty much afraid to launch them now. Watching this page with great interest  

[Starhawk]

Because this can be a craft-breaking issue, I expect that there will be a fix for this fairly quickly once the devs are back in the groove.

I am also watching this with great interest.

Happy landings!

[bewing]

AFAIK, for ver 1.1.2 -- the answer is that it doesn't. As Starhawk implied, probably best to wait for 1.1.3 to do multidocking.

[FleshJeb]

I can't answer your question on the current version, but I've done some incredibly precise multi-docking with MechJeb's SMART A.S.S. (on the order of centimeters of clearance). You can control relative roll, and set RCS to Translation Only to make it super-controllable.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Just did some experiments:

Built a test rig, and used hyper edit to get it to orbit.  At one end I had four standard ports on a quad adapter, at the other I had a senior .  To which I had radial mounted two size zero fuel tanks with junior docking ports.  And then I made the appropriate counterparts.

As soon as I put it on the launch pad, the quad dock was jelly.  In orbit it was a little better.  I decoupled everything, backed off a quad Dock, and tried to reconnect.  Two of the receiving ports broke off and floated away into space.  The other two connected!

I did the same with my senior with two radial juniors.

They connect it like a charm!  In a second!  All three!  Add are much stronger than the two remaining parts of the quad.

So, radial mounting one or two juniors around a senior does seem to be a working solution, research is ongoing…

2 hours ago, Starhawk said:

Because this can be a craft-breaking issue, I expect that there will be a fix for this fairly quickly once the devs are back in the groove.

I am also watching this with great interest.

Happy landings!

wait, grooves.

you know we don't HAVE to do this with docking ports.

You could just make a groove and key with metal parts....  those short I-beams, just interlocking....

Edited May 20, 2016 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Well... my experiments went here

Edited May 21, 2016 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[Starhawk]

19 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

Well... my experiments went here

This sort of multi-port docking definitely works in 1.1.2.

What's not working is having two (or more) ports on a specific ship that you want to attach to two (or more) ports on another ship.  Pre-1.1 you could connect one of the docking ports in the VAB, and the other would connect on physics load as long as they were positioned correctly.  In 1.1.2, this appears to work and if you click on the second docking port after physics load it will show that it's docked.  But, if you undock the first one, the ships disconnect and you can see that the second one was not really connected.

Happy landings!

[Starhawk]

It appears I must apologize.  I had relied on information in the bug tracker and release notes to determine whether this had been fixed.  When 1.1 was released, this bug was still open and high priority in the tracker.  I looked in the release notes for any sign that this had been resolved, but did not see any.  After watching the tracker and the patch notes for 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 I still did not see any reference to fixing this.  This convinced me it was still an issue.

Also, I misunderstood certain aspects of multi docking so that when I did attempt to test it, I did not get accurate information from the test I performed.

Yesterday, during Squadcast, I asked how the fix for multi-port docking was coming. @KasperVld read the question and @NathanKell answered and asked for more information, sounding surprised.  He indicated that there had been an issue during pre-release, but that it had been solved.  So I did some more reading and then decided to do a more comprehensive and meaningful test.

It would appear that multi-port docking is working just fine.

I try very hard to develop an accurate understanding of the game's status as it changes and I also endeavour to avoid stating or spreading false information.  I feel very disappointed that I failed in this case to confirm my info correctly before asserting my understanding.

I would like to humbly apologize, once again.

For anybody who's interested, here's some details.  As we know, the vessel structure is a tree.  When multi-port docking is used in the game, it creates a virtual strut between the two docking ports to simulate the second (or third, etc) docking joint.  Struts, of course, automatically detach when the primary attachment point is removed (i.e. when activating a decoupler).  And so do secondary (and tertiary, etc) docking ports.  The other thing that threw me off, was that the secondary and tertiary ports were not lined up perfectly, but still indicated they were docked.

I flew this SSTO that I created in 1.0.5 (or 1.0.4?) up to orbit and released the explorer ship.  I then redocked it and all the ports appeared to dock and the game indicated the two non-primary ports were both docked even though the alignment was visually off.  I then deorbited the craft which was coming down very heavy because the explorer craft's tanks were still chock full.  The ports held perfectly and the ship landed (in the wild) without incident.

Happy landings!

Edited May 27, 2016 by Starhawk

[bewing]

2 hours ago, Starhawk said:

It appears I must apologize.  I had relied on information in the bug tracker and release notes to determine whether this had been fixed.

 

We are all working with slightly outdated info.  Including me, so this post may be wrong (we cannot all test everything!). It is my understanding that in 1.1.1, that if you used multi-docking, then sometimes (randomly?) some of your multi-docked ports can fall off. I do not know if this issue was fixed in 1.1.2, but I do not believe it was.

 

[Idinyphe]

Hello! Maybe this is the right place to ask that kind of question. 

I tried to make an upgradable station and I like the idea of building spcaeships... in space. So I came up with a "factory" making it easy to put together parts in space... this thing would be huge and consist of very small parts (as I can only lift up very small parts into space at this point in my career). I am using career mode.

I constructed something like this

 

O - O - O

|   |   |

O - O - O

|   |   |

O - O - O

 

Every part is connected with 2 clamp-o-trons and carried into space one by one. Up there I tried to stick together the clamp-o-trons and it worked!

However... when I came back a few "ingame-days" later the thing messed up like this:

O - O - O

|   /   |

O - O - O

/   |   |

O - O - O

 

The "/" shows where parts did "disconnect" somehow (how?) on one side. (other side is still connected to the station) I was not able to "reconnect" it in space.

I could bring up a few of my "shunting yard space ships" and fix ist (but that would take a lot of time and money). I think if I solve the problem the next time I come back it would appear once more. Maybe it has to do with the size of the clamp-o-trons (I have only the "medium" size at this point in the career).

 

It would be nice if anybody has an idea what caused the "disconnect" of the clamp-o-trons. Is it a "bug"? I expected the desing to end up much larger... 

Edited May 28, 2016 by Idinyphe