Discussion Question: Is there a way for a third party tool to detect with absolute 100% certainty that a ship has just docked or is docked?

[wolverine2710]

Question: Is there a way for a third party tool to detect with absolute 100% certainty that a ship has just docked or is docked?

The title exactly says it all. Is this possible?

I thought that the netlogs (with debug mode ON) could be used for this. But I've been reading/hearing that that is not 100% reliable.
Not sure if this is true, I lack that knowledge. Hence this thread. Does someone knows a solution?

If detection could be made 100% reliable it would for example be useful for mobile api based tools AND other tools to run in the background. No alt-tabbing needed to (re)run them when you dock or are docked to retrieve market data, shipyard, outfitting information. Hence not breaking immersion. That would be absolutely fantastic.

Now that those tools which use the iPhone companion app api are officially allowed by FD (source) I thought it would be a good time to ask.

Note: Please be so kind to ONLY discuss the technical aspect of the question. Discussion about whether you are pro or con such a functionality or the allowed usage of the api is best suited for another thread.

 

[Vandaahl]

I can imagine the value is also kept server side, because its a position related vessel property, and synced with the client once in a while.

In terms of 100% reliability...
The server persists most of the important data. So if a player docks his ship, the client logs the ship has touched down but the client crashes before the value is synced to the server, then you'll end up in the situation where the server knows less than the client did when it was still alive. When the player fires up the game again, the client will most certainly act on the data it gets from the server and will ignore the data from loging. This is just one situation that came up while pondering why it would not be 100% reliable.

It not always advisable (or maybe always not) to reason back from the log file, as the log files only mention what the game was doing at the time the line was written, not what it is doing now. If you want to be sure, you need a well build and documented API.

 

[wolverine2710]

I can imagine the value is also kept server side, because its a position related vessel property, and synced with the client once in a while.

In terms of 100% reliability...
The server persists most of the important data. So if a player docks his ship, the client logs the ship has touched down but the client crashes before the value is synced to the server, then you'll end up in the situation where the server knows less than the client did when it was still alive. When the player fires up the game again, the client will most certainly act on the data it gets from the server and will ignore the data from loging. This is just one situation that came up while pondering why it would not be 100% reliable.

It not always advisable (or maybe always not) to reason back from the log file, as the log files only mention what the game was doing at the time the line was written, not what it is doing now. If you want to be sure, you need a well build and documented API.

Thanks for the good explanation.