Ouestions About Docking Ports

[GrumpyOldMan]

1) Is there any reason why a docking port has to be round? Could it be oval or rectangular for instance?

2) If a docking port was oval or rectangular would it attach only when aligned exactly with it's mate?

I'm thinking attachment is based only on alignment of the attach node and not orientation. If that's true is there any reason why a docking port can't have more than one attach node? And would that force alignment?

3) Can other parts (say a fuel tank) have a docking port incorporated into them?

[NoMrBond]

Nope, there are already a few mods which have essentially triangular and octagonal docking ports

The docking between ports is governed by size I think, so an n-gon with node size 2 would dock to anything else which is also node size 2 size, shape not-withstanding, if you set the node size to something unique then it could only dock to identical ports

Making docking ports with multiple docking nodes is a very bad idea from memory, I remember Cpt. Kipard was trying it and it just doesn't work

Yes I think so, as long as there is only one docking node per part

[wasmic]

The fun thing is that for docking ports, you can set the node size to whatever you want. You can even do a size = ROFLCOPTER and have it only dock to other ports with size = ROFLCOPTER.

[Porkjet]

Multiple docking nodes per part does work.

Check out the hollow structures and hulls mod by alskari for how to do it

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29031-0-23-5-Hollow-Structures-Hulls-%28Updated-2014-04-09%29

and my desperate attempt to do so aswell Read the whole thread, lots of information.

In the end it turned out I just had a { missing somewhere so I'm not exactly sure when was the exact moment where it was technically working.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/63871-Multiple-docking-nodes-on-the-same-part

Edited June 23, 2014 by Porkjet

[Mihara]

To go back to the specfic questions the OP asked:

1. The shape of the docking port can be any, including non-flat, ModuleDockingNode doesn't know. If the reference attach node is not on the surface, though, the docking might never complete because they never come close enough to each other. Which brings us to...
   
2. ModuleDockingNode does not know anything about orientation and does not observe it -- all it cares about is the dot product between two port direction vectors and velocities. The only solutions worked out so far to make docking nodes capture only in specific orientations were tabs-and-slots of one kind or another, preventing the actual nodes from coming close enough to each other if the tabs don't fit into slots. They aren't particularly popular, but they do exist.
   
3. Any part can have a ModuleDockingNode and this does not impede it's operation as anything else, as long as there is only one and it has it's own transform. Multiple nodes per part can be problematic to set up, but also work.