Docking with stations tweak

[Mikrosh]

It won't work unfortunately...

Big Cargo ships not being able to dock with a small station.
Already tested that. I run a Zoner faction, therefor I can't dock in house space with my whale.
I had to buy a lot of stuff from house space, to build our bases, so I was just going to bret and yelled for players to help me unload/load. It was fun and all that, but sometimes I had to wait for a couple of hours to find a player to help me.

There are not enough players online in all the systems in order to make this possible. Thing that kills the RP.
Or you want to tell me that I go to bretonia, and I need to wait hours to find a freighter to unload my cargo?

Battle ships docking on batleships/big stations
We can't have battleships to be moored only. Because, stations are not players, they won't offer the smart protection to a moored battleship. Plus a battleship, even if it is moored, it's crew is able to mount the turets and defend for itself.

Point: Station defenses are to lame to protect a moored BS. A moored BS could also defend itself.

Atm, BS are moored to a small station. but they dock to RP the fact that the BS is protected by the station and the BS turets are active even if it is moored.

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[Echo 7-7]

However the listed problems are unreal to solve, this one does. It purly adds to gameplay w\o messing up everything a big time since ability of restricting docking rights to various ship classes was implemented into vanilla.

Scale problems can be solved, and probably with a less complicated solution than your original idea. However, the sheer quantity of work required to portray the Sirius Sector to scale completely outweighs the reward. Such an objective is only truly worthwhile for a total conversion mod for Freelancer.

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There was a sig here, once.

[Curios]

Multianswering.

Granted it makes not sense that a Battleship can be safe while docked at another Battleship, it also makes no sense that a Battleship cannot dock with another battleship at all.

Well technically they aren't actually docking inside the station I thought? With planets it's obvious, but in vanilla the bases told NPCs to go to "Moor N", so there are already shuttles that take things from the surface to your transport/capital ship still moored in orbit and docking tubes for crew/cargo on stations.

I agree that even mooring several battleships onto the one battleship of the same size is rather silly, but I think it's too much hassle for not much in the way of roleplay - just pointless 'realism'.

The fact of the matter is, these big ships can moor at any station they choose, that's why there's mooring points on every station.
The fact that Freelancer was never built to allow these ships to chill outside in the game world while their owner handled business on-base is not a reason to go complicating matters for the apparent purpose of just making it harder for people.

What's stopping you from RPing this way?
If casual traders and people who don't have all day to have freighters empty their Barge for them want to dock on the stations, you can pretend there are automated systems for cargo transfer or somesuch involved. In the meantime, you can RP someone who's ignorant or spiteful of these technologies and will only use the regular docking ports with small ships.

And yet you forget to mention that stations should get major and efficient armament. Though I would start with it, instead of so much effort requiring fun breaker-immersion providing gameplay change.

Your idea is fitting for high value (maybe smuggling) runs, but not so much for the standard haul. You see, most trade runs go from major lawful base to major lawful base - and all of those bases have moorings, since they tend to run high volumes of cargo.

It would be fitting for unlawful bases, at least some of them. The problem is, if we block transports from those bases by removing the medium mooring, that would also block all capital ships and any ship too big to fit in the fighterberth - the Spatial for instance. But the main issue would be that all gunboats would be unable to dock on unlawful bases, which would cause a bit of an outcry I wager.

Big ships shouldnt be able to dock on small stations, but they should be able to MOOR with them. So whats needed is not to remove thier docking ability, but to replace it with the ship still being in space ingame, but able to offload its cargo and get regens and stuff.

While the idea has merit. One can easily use their imagination.

That battleship that just docked with that other battleship? Merely moved in close enough to moor to one another.

That big transport that just docked with Freeport 5? It sitting right over there and shuttles are offloading it

We're playing a game. Yes, the way ships dock breaks immersion; but so does the fact that the barge is bigger than a planet and that star systems don't orbit their stars and the list goes on.

alt solution:

docking sequence - ships are still in space.

if we use 'mooring' points on planets and bases, but keep a persistent model of the ship in space, this will mean that
1. large ships can still dock with little stations
2. large ships dont 'disappear' inside little stations
3. no docking to hide from RP encounters.... i mean piracy, or customs/excise inspections
4. only fighters and frieghters can 'dock' all other ships need to moor, transports included

Big Cargo ships not being able to dock with a small station.
Already tested that. I run a Zoner faction, therefor I can't dock in house space with my whale.
I had to buy a lot of stuff from house space, to build our bases, so I was just going to bret and yelled for players to help me unload/load. It was fun and all that, but sometimes I had to wait for a couple of hours to find a player to help me.

There are not enough players online in all the systems in order to make this possible. Thing that kills the RP.
Or you want to tell me that I go to bretonia, and I need to wait hours to find a freighter to unload my cargo?

Battle ships docking on batleships/big stations
We can't have battleships to be moored only. Because, stations are not players, they won't offer the smart protection to a moored battleship. Plus a battleship, even if it is moored, it's crew is able to mount the turets and defend for itself.

Point: Station defenses are to lame to protect a moored BS. A moored BS could also defend itself.

Atm, BS are moored to a small station. but they dock to RP the fact that the BS is protected by the station and the BS turets are active even if it is moored.

1. Bs docks at another bs it's actually bs moors at other bs.

This point is wrong since it actually docks, not moors and it can't be done the way where it actually moors by the game mechanics.

There is a big difference between docking and mooring since if the ship is moored it's still left in space and can be bombed while it can shoot back as well.

Preventing ship from docking at all will most likely look like a mooring because ship will be left in space. :rolleyes:

Anyway that can't be fixed the other way so we have either to go for "realism" and more fun where big ships are limited to some few stations\planets and have to choose a route with more caution knowing they can't put themselves inside the nearest box. yn, it's fun. Or we can simply do nothing. However game is already extreamly player friendly and easy to play, so the little heat will not harm.

2. Trading will be ruined coz 5ker can't dock manywhere.

Well, yea. It can't dock to many small stations. However granted, with some trading system tweak (as I mentioned at beggining) trading with freighters will become more comfortable and profitable. So if you want to go for regular profit on a route where big ship can't dock - use freighter. Wanna some serious business profit? Get a 5ker, escorts and freighters to unload it, faction can be able to make it instead of simply runnining around with 5k lemming trains. Dangerous and complicated for the bigger $ of cause.

3. Stations have not enough def.

True that, however I would not go full retard with that like in Gallia, stations already have pulses and in most cases it's enough to deshield gb. Adding few gatlings to stations would be a good thing to spray on snubs.

However again, NPCs and stations are not here to substitute a real players and interrations with them.

SO YOU HAVE TO USE GOT DAMN ESCORS ™

4. RPing that you moored.

Welllll sir, you see, while it's good idea for a single person to have own fun, it's become lame if no one else do that. We can't give a players authority to determine their business and actions by themselves.

Imagine we delete all IDs where the stuff you can\can't do is listed. That will be a friggin mess for sure or worst.
Players can't be trusted and thus the gameplay\rule\etc regulations are here to... regulate things. right?

Edit: Also, no one is reviwing a possibility of using... smaller ships? Really guys. Many other cool ships to use. It's worth it. I know Bowex already likes to fly Clydesdale =P

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