Passive/Unpowered Docking (Carrier Ships)

[Atreties]

Beautifully demonstrated in a recent progress video, carrier ships are possible via cargo beams:

While this is quite exciting and remarkable, I am concerned with the viability of actually using this method in practice. While we don't know the specific values of how much power is required to keep a cargo beam going, I imagine the power required to use the number shown in the video to be quite draining and restrictive. Also, the requirement for each fighter to be beamed on 3 sides severely limits and complicates the design possibilities of carrier ships themselves.

So, my suggestion is a new ship component:

Docking Clamps

The idea of this component will be as follows: the carrier ship and fighter ship both have a docking clamp - possibly the carrier having a variant of "place to be docked in" and the fighter having the variant of "thing to be docked" - Once the 2 components come fairly close, the 2 components are drawn together via an electromagnet on the receiving end. Once the fighter is drawn into place, the docking clamp can be engaged, locking the fighter in place.

The benefit of this component over the current method would be that it requires a fraction of the physical space involved in surrounding the docked object in 3 sides of cargo beams, and it requires no power whatsoever once the docked object is locked in place.

Also, while my primary reason for suggesting this component is to make carriers more viable, the component would have many more uses than simply a carrier-fighter pair. Likely, a much more common use will be in cargo containers. The current options for cargo containers seems either tedious (manually bolting down cargo containers) or cumbersome for most ship designs (cargo beams/cargo lock frame). Docking clamps would provide a good middle ground of transporting cargo crates and other objects without having to design an entire ship around the task like the Urchin.

 

[Recatek]

Agreed, especially for long trips.

Cargo beams are good for holding things whether or not they were designed to be held (or even want to be held) by the beam. On the other hand, if you specifically design your ship to interface with another, a cargo beam would essentially be overkill. There should be a cheaper and more efficient option for when you're engineering both ends of the interaction to work with one another (and in turn limiting yourself in what can then be grabbed).

 

[CalenLoki]

Disagree.

I actually like the additional challenge that comes with cargo beams.

And I wouldn't mind having them even harder to use: by requiring two beams exactly opposite from each other.
Right now it's too easy to just make beams projected from single plane, negating the need for fancy ships with "arms"
Otherwise every ship you make doubles as perfectly viable cargo hauler, no need for specialisation.

Making them use more power/spread mass inequally if they grab far away from CoM would be cool as well.

Or making them more energy efficient if the beam is shorter and/or hit specific module. That would reward designing ships to work together.

Energy usage is negligible: 5 per cargo beam + 20 per ton. Not much compared to 1000 from single reactor.
Fighter-sized asteroids was hauled by just 16. And we don't know how many you need exactly, and how many were there just for safety. Going the risky way of "just enough" should be rewarded with higher energy efficiency.

Making system that automatically bolts/unbolts containers is easy as well, if you travel really far away.

Engineering > easy mode.

EDIT. After some more thought about it, docking clamps would open some new engineering options, like detachable fuel tanks, Docked ships contributing to carrier movement with their thrusters, ect.
But it need to be well balanced, to keep other options valid. For sure SI should apply to it in full force, so you need as many clamps as you'd need bolts.

 

[Atreties]

Disagree.

I actually like the additional challenge that comes with cargo beams.

And I wouldn't mind having them even harder to use: by requiring two beams exactly opposite from each other.
Right now it's too easy to just make beams projected from single plane, negating the need for fancy ships with "arms"

Nothing is preventing you from still using cargo beams as the method of creating a carrier, if you can make it work. The suggestion would simply provide an additional tool to our arsenal as engineers and designers. The cargo beam option would still have some advantages, even, like much reduced risk of pilot error causing a crash upon docking, and much faster docking, allowing for actually docking during combat, for example, which would be all but impossible for docking clamp method.

Right now it's too easy to just make beams projected from single plane, negating the need for fancy ships with "arms"
...
Energy usage is negligible: 5 per cargo beam + 20 per ton. Not much compared to 1000 from single reactor.

If it's already easy to accomplish, and the energy is already negligible, then what's the issue? Adding a new tool to our design arsenal would simply increase diversity of options and possible designs.

 

[Cavilier210]

I think the overall problem may be that it may currently take 2 and make them 1, and then 1 and make it 2. Perhaps the system isn't set up for this at the moment. Also, The beams do allow high speed capture, like a net on a CVN.

 

[CalenLoki]

My issue is that it's too easy to make multipurpose ships.

I'd love if you had to design ship with more dedication. I.e. make "arms", cargo bays or hangars necessary to carry stuff (asteroids, cargo, ships).
Right now is super easy to just slap beams on the outer hull of a fighter. They weight almost nothing. They sit on a flat surface of external armour. Thrusters and energy is already there, as you need them for combat.

Adding docking clamps would just petrify those tendencies.

I'd rather implement features that encourage specialisation.
I.e. make space jelly slightly corrosive, so keeping fighters on the outer hull damages them over longer periods of time. Then clamps won't be that harmful.

And I have alternative idea: Frameof relatively static space jelly.
You build it like normal cargo frame.
When powered things/robots can move inside, enter or exit it.
But when the whole carrier moves, things inside the frame act as if frame were static. So they are not pushed towards the rear wall.

Just imagine a jar of jelly pulled through the ocean of jelly.

Also cargo/relativity frame could use energy based on surface, rather than volume. So huge cargo rooms wouldn't be that expensive to run.
Even better if you could use panels to reduce that volume, so you need to power only surface of gate(s).

I think that deserves its own thread...

 

[Vexus]

The technical achievement of what you see with the cargo lock beams is something not many games tackle. Seeing it in action here is pretty amazing; and it's going to be multiplayer, which is mind blowing. Most games have trouble keeping a player on a moving object, let alone players and other ships attached. The devs are masters at their craft and it shows. There's a huge technical limitation to simply attaching two objects in a game engine and they've done something amazing with the cargo lock beams and everything else. The issue is keeping everything in sync for everyone involved but also making sure the objects remain separate in terms of damage and so on. A single point of 'attachment' like a physical 'clamp' would lead to constant issues for the devs over the current system. If they do design such a clamp - which I'd say is likely - it's probably a re-skin of the same cargo lock beam mechanic, but miniaturized.

Which is all that is needed; the same or similar object, with a simple 'clamp' function which lowers or eliminates the power cost of operation. After all, the issue you are presenting is that there should be no power cost - not necessarily that there should be some other method for docking a ship to another ship. It is the size, potential power cost, numerical amount and 'spam' of the beams that seems the issue, though I am pretty sure this is just for testing and players would design the most minimal, 3-beam system to secure their docked ships. In some of the YouTube videos, they show a rotating turret mount with 3 beams attached rotating ships as if the ships were on display in a station shop. The number and potential power cost shown in this video seems more for ease of testing; not practical use by dedicated players.

My main concern is making sure the mass of the docked ship is properly accounted for in the fuel cost and speed of the carrier ship. I don't mind the potential power draw from the beams as long as everyone is playing by the same rules, and physics is accounted for. The power cost does have some concern; like losing power, and having all your ships fling off your carrier ship. That's what a power-less docking method definitely has over a powered method; perhaps you need emergency power - or a precise cut - to free your carried-ship from a carrier ship which lost its power source, as there would be no power to operate and release the clamp otherwise.

 

[Atreties]

After all, the issue you are presenting is that there should be no power cost - not necessarily that there should be some other method for docking a ship to another ship.

Unpowered is one part of it, but the other large reason is reducing the incredible design overhead in finding real estate to fit all of the necessary beams at their necessary angles. Docking clamp allows you to dock a wider variety of shaped vessels to a much wider variety of locations on the carrier ship, too.

 

[Azelous]

One thing that may be worthwhile to consider is the load of the docked ship on the structure of the main ship. I would assume either solution would exert strain on either ship due to being attached to one another, though docking clamps may have more accidents in the beginning with players thinking they can do with one docking clamp.

 

[PopeUrban]

I think the easiest way to balance clamps would just be to require the clamp assemblies on both ends to have a rather large mass/size profile. This would require a significant amount of the surface area of both objects you wish to clamp together to be dedicated to a device that:

* Must be exposed to weapons fire, or have dedicated additional engineering to deploying/retracting the assemblies (as it is an external device)
* Takes up significant amounts of space on the exterior frame of small ships. (I'd envision these things being about twice as large as a standard cockpit assembly as its a large mechanical clamp rather than an electromagnet or other powered device)
* Requires precise (probably yolo-driven if you want a "bottom clamp" fighter) piloting to align two matched clamps and lock in (These kinds of systems without the benefit of gravity-based taxiing are some of the most challenging modern day aeronautics maneuvers in real life.)
* Has more points of failure than beams (since you'd need to define the IDs for clamps on two objects, either end being hacked/disabled could render it all inoperable and unable to connect or release clamps, compared to beams where one network vessel controls the entire assembly)
* Is likely easier to sabotage/requires more engineering to status check (You'd need two pilots or a snoopable/spoofable radio transmitter to sync up the clamps, and you could sabotage either end without the other knowing until they checked the status of both clamps)

As for the technical challenge I don't imagine it to be particularly more challenging than the beams, as I assume the beams work by checking the beam attachment points and then simply defining one object as child of another, and then adding some entries to the parent to update its mass and such things. Rolling around how I'd write such systems In my head, it seems to me the beams would have to have a few more logic steps than what one would need to write to get clamps working so I very much doubt its a situation of technical challenge as much as it is game design choices on the part of FB.

The idea here being that the mass and size of such a clamp, if used on something like a fighter would necessitate the fighter be designed around it. Unlike the "just slap em on there" magnetic landing gear you see in other building games, this would be a big, gnarly, hard clamp. The price you pay for attaching N vessels together without constant power consumption.

 

[Burnside]

depending on how stable rail movers are under force, and whether they can snap to rails by proximity, this is basically how they would operate if a specialised docking clamp were implemented. the big issue is attractive or landing forces jarring superstructure on either end, so it'd be better to ask for something like a shock absorber or a way to make rails/rail movers into piston shocks

 

[Lionard Freezer]

whether they can snap to rails by proximity,

They cant for all we have seen. they need to be placed manually on the rails and cant be removed automaticly

 

[Burnside]

rail movers can exit a rail by running off an open end, as shown in one of the latest boltcrackers vids, so we can at least perform a fighter launch system, and I think tractors enable snapping for the objects they've caught, so... high-tech loading crane, I guess

 

[CalenLoki]

They can also go from one rail to another one.

Maybe that could be abused to make docking possible? Or maybe it means they actually snap to rails?

 

[Burnside]

Fingers crossed.

 

[Lionard Freezer]

would be cool if it works... we could make quite a few useful designs with this consept.