Even if you hate the Docking Computer...
- Thread starter IndigoWyrd
- Start date
I'm going to have to try the docking computer once just to see what it's like. I've manually docked since I first started with my Sidey. I'm in a T7 right now, so that should be interesting.
I can fly into a station faster and easily than with the docking computer. Exiting the station I can plot my route as I'm leaving the mass lock of the station and I'm on my way. It will of course take time for new people to get used to manually docking, but it will be a lot quicker without the DC in the long run, plus one less slot taken up (though this really doesn't matter for larger ships that have more than enough slots as it is)...
I'll try it tonight, since I have a free slot anyway. If I crash, I'm taking pictures. lol
I never used one much in the last couple years, buy I recently built an Orca and had everything on it I wanted with a spare slot - so I decided to put a DC in there to see what all the fuss was about.
Nothing to complain about yet.
It can actually speed up docking quite a bit if you know where the pad is before entry and gas it through the letterbox and cut the throttle on final approach - it just drops you down in nuttin flat.
Kinda fun actually. Now that you can see the station orientation in SC, it's all too easy. Pop out facing the slot, boost, request, through the slot, cut the gas, and your done in no time at all.
Makes the Transport passenger missions a breeze.
Nothing to complain about yet.
It can actually speed up docking quite a bit if you know where the pad is before entry and gas it through the letterbox and cut the throttle on final approach - it just drops you down in nuttin flat.
Kinda fun actually. Now that you can see the station orientation in SC, it's all too easy. Pop out facing the slot, boost, request, through the slot, cut the gas, and your done in no time at all.
Makes the Transport passenger missions a breeze.
Okay so after hearing people say "Manual is quicker! Manual is quicker!" I decided to play without a DC all last night on PS4 in my Python and I gotta say that I will never do it again. It took me on average 2-3mins to dock properly. 3 times I inadvertently hit the building next to the pad and 4 times I hit the mail slot on the way in and I received 6 fines for inadvertently bumping into ships that were in my blind spot while trying to enter and land.
All of that in just a single night. A 4 and half hour session.
Meanwhile in the WEEKS since I got the game on the 27th when it released I have only ever had the DC mess up a single time and even then it wasn't even the DCs fault. The DC also averages around 45secs to 1 and a half minutes to get me docked safely.
All of that in just a single night. A 4 and half hour session.
Meanwhile in the WEEKS since I got the game on the 27th when it released I have only ever had the DC mess up a single time and even then it wasn't even the DCs fault. The DC also averages around 45secs to 1 and a half minutes to get me docked safely.
It's amazing how many people still claim they can dock faster than the computer, manually.
That depends...
If your talking about 7.5km out and you request docking and zero the throttle, manual is faster under any circumstance.
If you are talking about like I described above where you know where your pad is before going through the letterbox and you line it up so you don't zero throttle until the last 100 meters or so, then it can be faster - largely dependent on what ship you're in.
And, of course, there's a middle ground at each end of the spectrum.
You also have to consider that, at least in my experience, it seems like FD likes to play with the landing parameters a bit. Since 2.3 it feels to me like you have to be lower now than in the past for the docking clamps to engage. Could just be me, but I find it especially noticeable on the Clipper. The Clipper used to be one of the easiest to land as it would get clamped while you were still pretty high above the pad.
Not so much any more.
I think FD just likes messin with da noobs...
Something I would love to see, since we're talking about docking, is a better indicator of where the heck my landing pad is before I go through the mail slot. I always get the landing pads right in the very front of the starport, and so I have to brake and swing downward (or upward) and hope I don't hit another ship trying to come in from behind, or just hit the mail slot like I did with my Python. Come on, guys, there has to be a better way to indicate the designated landing pad.
Nobody told you you can just do it at the drop of a hat without hours and hours and hours of practice. With your maximum 22 days of play time, i would be surprised if you can even land a Cutter smoothly without incident unless you have a lot of flight sim or real life flight time, not to mention beat the DC. Not to put you down... when I first got my Cutter, I already had over 30 years of flight simming, a real-life pilot's license, and way over 1000 hours in Elite, and I still bumped my shield off. That ship is slippery!
Sure, manual docking could be faster than DC... but it takes a lot of practice and concentration. When I trade, I strive for excellency and precision in flight. I screw up, forget to request docking, miss the SC drop, scrap the mail slot, coming in too hot.... I am only human... but I try to perfect it. Still trying... That's what I enjoy... if you don't enjoy that... buy a DC! It will be faster for "you", but not for me.
The way to Carnegie Hall is Practice, Practice, Practice.
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After a few thousand hours, it kinda becomes 2nd nature, but there's also Voice Attack and EDDI profile that announces the pad location after you request docking.
There are also many published charts somewhere that show you a location diagram.
https://www.google.com/search?q=REl...e..69i57j0.21379j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
While I don't actually have them memorized, I find that after a few runs in a ship of each size class, I quickly remember the locations for that size group. After a bit it just seems intuitive.
HTH
I'm not even going to read all of the replies to your post.
In 1986 i managed to earn enough credits to buy my docking computer. That was a huge accomplishment. When trying to manually dock, if you barely scratched the station your ship would be destroyed.
Trying to match the rotation of the port, keeping your angle and speed was a game in its self. Now you can bounce all over the place and barely scratch your paint. For all of the DC haters out there...
Disable your shields and lets see some of your awesome talent.
In 1986 i managed to earn enough credits to buy my docking computer. That was a huge accomplishment. When trying to manually dock, if you barely scratched the station your ship would be destroyed.
Trying to match the rotation of the port, keeping your angle and speed was a game in its self. Now you can bounce all over the place and barely scratch your paint. For all of the DC haters out there...
Disable your shields and lets see some of your awesome talent.
So my options are
1) Spend days and days of trial and error trying to park my ship properly on my own and that MIGHT be faster on average than the DC. Also having to re-learn how to park efficiently everytime I switch ships due to different ships having different flight behaviors.
OR
2) I can sacrifice a single module slot to have a DC that perfectly parks my ship for me and all I gotta do is navigate my ship to the station and manually fly it out. Also I can just exchange the DC between ships and it will work exactly the same regardless.
I will go with option 2 lol no offense intended, but it just seems easier and more convenient than having to learn and having the risk of human error in there.
Thank you! That will certainly come in handy. I've been playing for about 186 hours, and I'm flying a T7, which is easy enough to dock, land, and everything else, though I did have a Python. I don't think I'm ready for a Python yet, as I was destroyed once because of a docking error (though it may have been a bug and FDev is looking into it), and the second was because I hit the boost button instead of the landing gear button (my controller has "B" as boost, and "B-Down Arrow" as landing gear) and *splat* against the station I went. Oh, also, I had silent running on (doing a little illegal passenger running), and in the confusion couldn't deactivate it in time and *boom*, so it was kind of a *splat**boom*. lol
Pythons are ridiculously expensive to keep up at my level, too, so I thought "you know what? I'm just going to get a ship that has a lot of cargo room, but not as many expensive ways to die." The T7 was the answer for me. So far, I'm liking it. That's off topic, though.
Well, I ended up trying out the docking computer. Twice, so far, with no incidents to report. Oh, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover it docks as fast as I do, and with less risk of scraping the mail slot or accidentally hitting boost while trying to engage landing gear. lol
So color me impressed. I figure I'll use it more often, since it's in a slot I don't use anything for anyway. I'll do manuals every so often so I don't get rusty.
It's just practice. If you want to manually dock faster, you have to start from the basics. It's not as simple as trying it for the first time. That's what it seems people are missing. I tried a DC at the start and it was slow. Learned how to manually dock and boom I was doing it so much faster after practice.
Now some ships and thrusters will be different, the largest ships I use fast docking with are the FDL and Python. I haven't even bothered buying a Cutter or Anaconda yet, so those might be not as easy to fast dock.
I learned to fast dock though smuggling with my Python where you had to fly into the base before you got scanned as fast as you could, but that's where the practice comes in.
So it's just going to depend on the player. But yes, with enough practice it will be a hell of a lot more fun and quicker manually doing it if you want to spend the time learning it...
Now some ships and thrusters will be different, the largest ships I use fast docking with are the FDL and Python. I haven't even bothered buying a Cutter or Anaconda yet, so those might be not as easy to fast dock.
I learned to fast dock though smuggling with my Python where you had to fly into the base before you got scanned as fast as you could, but that's where the practice comes in.
So it's just going to depend on the player. But yes, with enough practice it will be a hell of a lot more fun and quicker manually doing it if you want to spend the time learning it...
With some ships I can stick a landing much faster than should probably be possible, especially on planetary installations.
[video=youtube;T1-VdZabY1I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1-VdZabY1I[/video]
Mostly just screwing around, making an inverted approach in a slightly beat up python, and a DC just won't stick a landing like that. At least not during normal use.
In stations though, it's a bit of a different story, especially busy ones, like CG stations, and more when they're especially busy like this past CG.
And yes, I could likely stick a manual landing faster, but that doesn't leave me time to continue an approach, mess around in my menus to plot a course and still maneuver. For that, the DC has everything handled.
[video=youtube;T1-VdZabY1I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1-VdZabY1I[/video]
Mostly just screwing around, making an inverted approach in a slightly beat up python, and a DC just won't stick a landing like that. At least not during normal use.
In stations though, it's a bit of a different story, especially busy ones, like CG stations, and more when they're especially busy like this past CG.
And yes, I could likely stick a manual landing faster, but that doesn't leave me time to continue an approach, mess around in my menus to plot a course and still maneuver. For that, the DC has everything handled.
You still need to practise your manual docking every so often. If you are under attack the DC goes offline, for example. There was a bug a few months ago where the universe was moved to the left by 12m and the DC tried to land you at the side of the pad. In this case you had to turn the DC off and land manually until the fix was deployed. In combat your DC may be damaged. And so on. Being able to land your ship manually, any ship, is essential and you should not ignore practising this skill every so often so that when you need to you can still do it.
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yyyyyyuuuuup.....cost me a T9 full of cargo at the CG this week, but to be fair it may have been a glitching station instance....flew manually through the slot and slowed down to zero approaching the correct indicated pad, auto dock took over and hovered me above same pad... but pad acted as though it was the wrong one, tried to throttle to get away but was somehow jammed over the right/wrong pad.....BOOM! all the work that took me to top 10% mostly undone by rebuy cost .
On a subsequent run got some more weird behaviours from Cg station ( too many CMDRS present??) so stuck out my bottom lip and flew the Jolligreene Jiayant back to Thompson in Varati. I'll pick up my payout another day
To be perfectly honest if I got to the point where my DC was offline and I couldn't properly park my ship for some reason I would just simply crash it on purpose. Don't get me wrong I can park it properly on my own. It just takes me a few mins. But if I was irritated enough due to my busted up ship I would have no issue suiciding the ship to save time.
I mean yeah my Python costs me over 4 million in re-buy costs which is slightly inconvenient, but I could make that up in just a few passenger missions.