Design suggestion for landing pads, hangars and the ship conveyor system
[down] Each star-port has several rows/rings of landing pads of various sizes, each depicted as being connected to a single hangar. Seems incredibly inefficient and wasteful, each star-port can only dock a maximum of 40 ships at a time and the hangars waste a massive cubic volume of space as well as atmosphere being dedicated as they are to a single ship. Then there is the continuity problem where a CMDR docks at one lading-pad, logs out of the game, logs back into the game later and has his or her ship lifted onto a different landing-pad.
[up] I propose that:
Instead of the single hangar under each landing-pad that is currently depicted in all space stations, settlements and outposts, the elevator and conveyor system that lowers ships and landing-pads from the surface of the dock should actually descend onto a track, a track that rings the entire station under the floor of the dock, accessible to all the landing-pads in that "row" and lined on both sides with hangars of varying sizes. This disconnects the number of landing-pads from the number of hangars eliminating the 40 ship capacity problem. IMO users will not mind if the spaces under the floor are fudged a bit to make it work since those spaces generally aren't seen.
This conveyor would also have at least one avenue that would be used to transport ships across the several rings of landing-pads in the space-station so that the continuity problem of ships being lowered from a landing-pad into hangar then later raised onto a different landing-pad is resolved and rationalized as traffic control.
With landing-pads all connected to a conveyor system, landing-pad blocking will have an avenue for resolution and many more than 40 ships will be able to dock simultaneously with a single station since capacity will be limited to the number of hangars, not the number of landing-pads a station has available.
Imagine: I land on my designated landing-pad and the ship conveyor system lowers my Asp-X onto a track where it slides past a half-dozen (or more) hangars, some empty, some containing some of my other ships or other CMDRs ships before flipping my ship around and depositing it into another one of my hangars where I could get out and WALK between the hangars to my Cutter, climb up the stairs, walk to the bridge, wave to CMDR Bjorn across the conveyor tracks in his T-9 Yggdrasil and call for the conveyor which then pulls my ship out of the hangar, slides it past a half-dozen (or so) ships to a suitable landing-pad and raises it into position for launch. I do not think the eye-candy and modified launch animations would slow the actual launch process much, if at all if managed carefully but it would mean a major graphic re-design..
[down] Each star-port has several rows/rings of landing pads of various sizes, each depicted as being connected to a single hangar. Seems incredibly inefficient and wasteful, each star-port can only dock a maximum of 40 ships at a time and the hangars waste a massive cubic volume of space as well as atmosphere being dedicated as they are to a single ship. Then there is the continuity problem where a CMDR docks at one lading-pad, logs out of the game, logs back into the game later and has his or her ship lifted onto a different landing-pad.
[up] I propose that:
Instead of the single hangar under each landing-pad that is currently depicted in all space stations, settlements and outposts, the elevator and conveyor system that lowers ships and landing-pads from the surface of the dock should actually descend onto a track, a track that rings the entire station under the floor of the dock, accessible to all the landing-pads in that "row" and lined on both sides with hangars of varying sizes. This disconnects the number of landing-pads from the number of hangars eliminating the 40 ship capacity problem. IMO users will not mind if the spaces under the floor are fudged a bit to make it work since those spaces generally aren't seen.
This conveyor would also have at least one avenue that would be used to transport ships across the several rings of landing-pads in the space-station so that the continuity problem of ships being lowered from a landing-pad into hangar then later raised onto a different landing-pad is resolved and rationalized as traffic control.
With landing-pads all connected to a conveyor system, landing-pad blocking will have an avenue for resolution and many more than 40 ships will be able to dock simultaneously with a single station since capacity will be limited to the number of hangars, not the number of landing-pads a station has available.
Imagine: I land on my designated landing-pad and the ship conveyor system lowers my Asp-X onto a track where it slides past a half-dozen (or more) hangars, some empty, some containing some of my other ships or other CMDRs ships before flipping my ship around and depositing it into another one of my hangars where I could get out and WALK between the hangars to my Cutter, climb up the stairs, walk to the bridge, wave to CMDR Bjorn across the conveyor tracks in his T-9 Yggdrasil and call for the conveyor which then pulls my ship out of the hangar, slides it past a half-dozen (or so) ships to a suitable landing-pad and raises it into position for launch. I do not think the eye-candy and modified launch animations would slow the actual launch process much, if at all if managed carefully but it would mean a major graphic re-design..
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