Seriously, what is up with this ship? Make this thing NOT suck to dock.
No matter how careful I am it always takes some tiny amount of hull damage every time I dock it, usually going through the slot. It takes damage landing on the pad.
It takes damage when LIFTING OFF THE PAD. [mad]
It always takes damage when auto-docking, both while going through the slot and then again when landing on the pad. I've seen it get stuck in the slot while auto-docking.
And, it doesn't help that I seem to be invisible to NPCs. They will just ram right into me while I'm sitting there stationary waiting for a clearing.
It's not really fun when I load up my cabins full of passengers bound for GD 215, head 330k ls out to the station, and then watch every single mission fail because the docking computer scratched the paint while landing on the pad. There's no reason I should need to waste a slot on a shield generator for a run like this just because the g ship vertices can't fit in the slots and landing pads without clipping the environment.
I thought I was going to make loads of money with this thing, but instead I'm just annihilating my rep and racking up station fines. In the first day that I've had it, I've already blown it up twice in the mail slot.
There ha been numerous problems reported with using the docking computer. And these should of course be fixed.
Fitting through the mail slot, take your time, and use the external camera to see your clearance. I do not play with mouse, but I still active the mouse point (forgot its name), this gives you a centered dot in the middle of your cockpit, that is showing your middle view straight ahead. So this gives you a good reference point to how you are positioned. The Beluga is a very tall ship and your cockpick is low in comparison, so you would aim to scrape the the belly, which should be aiming your mouse dot to be about 1/3rd from the top (again, use the external camera),
Tips for using the external to verify placement in the slot etc, without getting blown up etc, do this in solo, and at any sign of problem hit esc, and exit to main menu, this should save your ship and upon login be placed outside the station. This is also good for any kind of problems you can encounter inside the station, like getting stuck, or the rotational correction does not work etc, etc, .
Also, if you put down your landing gear, it will foil down the top spoiler wings, so if doing landing gear down entry/exit, you have to adjust the height accordingly. You can see this with the external camera as well. I guess this the problem with the docking computer, is does not account for landing gear, and thus you scrape the bottom of the slot.
And for landing on the landing pad, since you are sitting in the front, it is very easy to have the wrong angle, most often, noose down., once again, use the external camera to learn and correct your position. This is also a very common mistake new Cutter owners do. So if you have the wrong angle, it can quite easily damage your ship if you try to force the ship down.
So, docking computer sucks for the big ships and until FDEV fixes that, you have to do it manually if you want to avoid damages, and it is not that hard to actually learn.
I'm now a reckless Beluga/Cutter owner, that when the traffic is light (and no unknown CMDRs present), boost out through the slot. Yeah, and had Security ship ram me on the side... that is another problem with stupid NPCs playing games on their "mobile", instead of watching where they are going.
