Help with space station!

[ScottyDoesKnow]

Two major problems.

1. The hubs being off center after docking. What's the correct way to rotate the ports while building so that a 6 way node will always attach at the right angles?

In this screenshot, the white circles should be lined up with the metal arms.

Edit: The weird thing is the 3 handles on the port are slightly off from each other when docked. I would have thought they'd line up or be opposites, but it's like 10 degrees off.

2. Laaaaaag. I understand a lot of parts will eventually cause lag, but I've barely started the station. The lag became noticeable when I added the battery banks. Is it just a part count thing or are there extra calculations with batteries that are causing a slowdown?

I also just managed to accidentally end flight on the station, so I guess I get to start fresh if I find solutions to these problems

Edited June 17, 2013 by ScottyDoesKnow

[Trueborn]

Ahh the joys of ending a station flight. Yes, the part count on the battery pack is what is getting you, more so than any calculations. As far as your first issue, just rotate it correctly before docking. There is no requirement for the ports themselves to be oriented any particular way.

[ScottyDoesKnow]

Does it not have certain angles it can dock at? I tried undocking and rotating but it didn't seem to take at the correct angle.

[stupid_chris]

Alright to your first issue: the stock dockingports don't have attach guidance or docking angles. This means if you approach two of them, they will connect in whatever orientation they are. To correct your orientation, the only thing you can do is undock, go back a bit, rotate and then try to redock in the right orientation. Alternatively you can use a combination of tricouplers and regular dockingports but it's a bit harder because they don't always all connect and it adds to your part count. You could also use Hydrotech RCS, it adds docking cameras and targets so you can lock your craft in the correct and for docking. An extremely useful mod and in my opinion better than Lazor's docking cams for what is of the cameras. Up to you if you wanna check it out. Link

Then the second: It really is part count. By a quick judging, you have at least 200 parts there if not more, and depending on your computer, this can start to cause a bit of lag. Especially if you're looking at Kerbin at the same time. The only thing you can do is reduce the part count, the batteries don'T change anything to lag. Although you'Re going a bit overkill on the batteries so you might want to reduce that

Hope this helps!

Edited June 16, 2013 by stupid_chris
added link

[Vanamonde]

As for alignment, there nothing you can do except undock, back off, and dock again, hoping for a better alignment. As for part count, that's enough RCS propellant to supply a whole space program for a week, and enough batteries to power that program for a month. You could probably get by with one battery, and one RCS tank would certainly last you quite some time.

[ScottyDoesKnow]

Alright, got the right angles down now. I assume there's some kind of distance and/or time limit after undocking before you can redock? I think that's what happened the first time to make me think there were docking angles.

So I rebuilt, focusing on minimum number of parts. The RCS and fuel tanks no longer have RCS ports (sucks for docking). Battery banks are gone, hate to do it but I threw a generator in each solar array. Removed a couple parts from the utility vehicle as well and I'll only keep one or two up there. I'll also probably do only 1 lander and 1 interplanetary transport and no probes, which can be sent up when they're needed for a mission.

Edit: the amount of RCS is because the main purpose will be a refueling station, though that's two modules and I can probably take one off. Then again that's only 6 parts. The other three ports there will have orange fuel tanks as well.