Allow crafts to be capable of docking to themselves!!!!!

[Sean Mirrsen]

If they're all equal then why when making dual-couplers does it matter which one, the left or the right, I disconnect in flight? If I disconnect the left one iit drifts off a bit and then the magnets attract it back and it reconnects the other side. But if I disconnect the right one it does not disconnect and drift off. Their behavior is NOT identical.

If you connected them by docking, then something went wrong. If you connected them in the VAB, then you did it wrong. There simply must be no difference between multi-docking connections, because otherwise a multi-docked ship would bend under thrust. Squad spent a lot of time making sure that multi-docked connections behaved the right way with undocking, especially in regards to the ship's root point.

[Superfish57]

We have all been trying to tell you, physics don't work like this in real life. Go to the store and buy a big magnet and a small magnet, now put them next to each other and see what happens.

[N_las]

Thats why you need a weaker docking port and a strong docking port

Imagine you are very strong and are sitting in the back seat of a car. The front seat is reversed, so that it's facing you. In the front seat sits a weak person. Both of you are strapped to the seats.

Now, If you take each others hands and pull, the car won't move an inch. It doesn't matter if you can pull harder than the weak person, the car can't be propelled this way.

[Morrigi]

This looks suspiciously like a troll thread.

[Sean Mirrsen]

This looks suspiciously like a troll thread.

Indeed it does. But I have nothing better to do, and I like maintaining a collected disposition in the face of any inanity that gets thrown at me, so...

Heh, maybe I should try working in tech support.

Besides, I have my own plans for a magnetic field-driven propulsion system, so I'd be the last person to laugh at the premise itself. Mine is just less inane, and more technobabble. XD

[OdinYggd]

Going by what you are saying, if you tie a magnet to a stick, and then tie another magnet to the same stick a little ways from it such that they are attracted to each other, the stick should experience a thrust that attempts to pull it out of your hand and across the floor.

In reality this is not what happens. Because both magnets exert force of equal strength and opposite direction on the object they are attached to, the stick will simply bend slightly from the resulting strain and will not yield a net force in any direction.

So in the case of your ship, the forces involved will attempt to bend the structure you mounted the docking ports to, and the vessel would experience a net zero force because both docking ports are exerting the same force on their structures- which are linked together by the ship frame.

Magnets do not work when used in a carrot on a stick kind of approach, all that happens is the resulting attractive force will bend the stick while the object being propelled remains inert.

At this point your suggestion is effectively asking Squad to deliberately implement a bug in the game physics. As such, I can tell you that this suggestion will not be added any time soon, if ever at all.

Thread closed.