Contract suggestion: rendezvous and dock with spinning/tumbling vessel

[THX1138]

I'm not sure whether this is possible since the game freezes the attitude of vessels during warp but maybe there's a way of resuming a spin/tumble when exiting warp. The idea is to make the vessel spin around the axis of its docking port so you have to recreate that stupid scene in Interstellar where a damaged craft is conveniently spinning around the axis of its docking port.

[Snark]

It's a neat idea, but I think this would be seriously problematic.  Not only would it require persistent rotation (which would be a big change to the game), but also it would be trivially easy for the player to stop it tumbling.  Just grab hold with the Klaw.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Just did a recover X part contract for a Launch Escape System http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Launch_Escape_System

The part was spinning when I got to it and to make matters worse, the Klaw wouldn't grab it anywhere except dead center on the base. (I did some testing with gravity hacked back on Kerbin.)

Luckily I had a nearby probe that I used to gently nudge the part until it stopped spinning so much and I was able to pin it between the two crafts and get the Klaw attached to the base. I suppose I coulda've time warped to solve that problem but it didn't occur to me at the time, and it was actually quite a fun mission.

[pandaman]

2 hours ago, Snark said:

It's a neat idea, but I think this would be seriously problematic.  Not only would it require persistent rotation (which would be a big change to the game), but also it would be trivially easy for the player to stop it tumbling.  Just grab hold with the Klaw.

Just a thought from non programmer, but could persistent rotation be faked a bit?  If it remembers the axis and speed it could start it up again as soon as warp stops or the ship is activated or enters physics range.

[Snark]

2 hours ago, pandaman said:

Just a thought from non programmer, but could persistent rotation be faked a bit?  If it remembers the axis and speed it could start it up again as soon as warp stops or the ship is activated or enters physics range.

Certainly it can be faked.  There's a mod out there (named, IIRC, "Persistent Rotation" or the like) which does something along these lines, I think.

But the fact that anyone can trivially stop the rotation by grabbing hold with a klaw kind of makes it moot.

[regex]

5 minutes ago, Snark said:

But the fact that anyone can trivially stop the rotation by grabbing hold with a klaw kind of makes it moot.

Or, given that this is KSP, the user could even just butt up against the spinning vessel a few times to reduce the rotation to manageable levels.  Or just literally "lay flat" on the spinning vessel.

Edited July 7, 2016 by regex

[cantab]

So make Klawing the target a contract failure. As for bumping the object to null out the rotation, you'll never get it perfectly zeroed. I can say from experience that docking with a fairly slowly tumbling object is not quick or easy.

But therein I think lies the rub: Nobody seems to like hard or time-consuming contracts. I frequently see complaints that X contract is "too hard" or "takes too long" and the reward is too slim. I never see anyone moaning that a contract is easy money.

If the spin is through the port axis, on the other hand, then I believe it's elementary because of the tolerance of KSP docking ports. I don't think they even mind snapping docked with a major relative rotation rate.

Edited July 7, 2016 by cantab

[worir4]

This would be great so long as on the final approach organs start playing dramatic music! 

[THX1138]

2 hours ago, worir4 said:

This would be great so long as on the final approach organs start playing dramatic music! 

It would be a neat Easter egg