AI ships and entry ports, rules of the road.

[Grundfuttock]

If you have gone to the trouble of marking one side of the port with green lights and the other red to suggest which side a pilot should stick to when passing through the entry port, can you at least make the AI lead by example when possible?

It gets rather irritating when your options are to wait for the sidewinder flying through the middle of the hole or to try and squeeze through, possibly in a bigger ship. If you're trading you're likely trying to be as efficient and fast as possible, likely to be in a larger ship and quite possibly running without a shield to maximise cargo capacity; risking hull damage and repair all because the AI doesn't know the rules of the road and/or thinks its backside is 5 times as large as it actually is.

 

[Negative Entropy]

this is not the purpose of the lights.

 

[Undecided]

Afternoon Commanders,

I will attempt to try to clear this up....!

• The lights are orientation lights so you can align your ship to the station in a consistent way. If you enter a station with the green on your right and red on your left you will find that the docking pad numbers are arranged front to back, clockwise, starting from below you. For legacy reasons, Pad numbers 1 and 13 were reversed. This is now fixed and will be included in a future update. All other pads follow a consistent numbering convention.

• There is no “traffic light” system in operation.

• The reason for the red lights on the cage flashing and the green ones kept steady is to help people with colour-blindness difficulties distinguish between them.

• Be considerate – use your scanner and look around, if someone is coming through the portal be patient and let them pass.

• Small ships should give way to large ships.

• If commanders wish to use the “green” side of the portal to enter or exit from the station it is up to them, but it is not a convention, rule or the intended use of the lights. Large ships will need to use the centre of the portal to pass through anyway. NPC ships will always pass through the middle.

• If you exit the station with the inner green light on your right and the red on your left, you will be orientated the same way up as an incoming ship, facilitating a gentlemanly wave between cockpit glass and the wish of good fortune between pilots.

Fly safe,

Simon

Basically this has been discussed to death.