Someone has to say it: The docking slot is stupid
- Thread starter AJStoner
- Start date
I've flown an Anaconda out whilst an NPC flew a T9 in! To be fair the NPC was doing a pretty good job of keeping to the green side but that mail slot is a LOT bigger than you think. Remember speeds in the ship are measured in meters per second, that right there is why it's easy to crash, not because the mail slot is too small.
That and the big ships are wider than they are high so no real advantage to having a circular opening.
That and the big ships are wider than they are high so no real advantage to having a circular opening.
Also with a circular opening the reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II wouldn't work either.
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In Beta (think it was) there was blast doors that could close. Very difficult to achieve the same strength/speed using round opening (iris closing or one large bank vault round door)
Lets hope they come back in at a later date as a feature of stations under attack.
Lets hope they come back in at a later date as a feature of stations under attack.
Not all ships are designed with the cockpit centered right in the middle. You need to learn where you are sitting in relation to the rest of the ship, and fly it accordingly. In one ship, you might fly down the center of the slot; in another, you might need to almost bump your head on the slot.
Maybe the atmosphere retention field energy cost scales with the square of the distance. That would make a circle cost way more.
Arguing realism is kind of pointless. There won't be FTL ships, there won't be a star-spanning civilization, there won't be fuel scoops, and the economics that would allow an individual to own a personal military spaceship aren't going to happen, either. None of it is realistic, so don't argue for realism.
You had it right in the first sentence: "is neat looking" Enjoy it.
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X-Terminator
Banned
The cars would need to be on rails and we'd all be floating around trying to board our ships. Outfitting would be slower too.
Well ... if we can find a negative mass particle then FTL is possible (look up Alcubierre Drives) and jumping from one star to another would be too (Einstein-Rosen Bridge). Fuel scooping I don't know the theoretical science behind so I'll have to leave that but at one point the thought of owning a metal horseless carriage that could transport us 100's of miles by filling it with exploding dinosaur juice probably seemed highly unlikely as well. And yet here we are with cars!
With you 100% on the Enjoy it bit though
That's easy: Scooping up charged particles (particularly protons) from the atmosphere of the star.
The docking slot was a fundamental feature of the original Elite, so imagine the fuss if it hadn't been included in this game!
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It provides a challenge in the game that new pilots must master but, that aside, there are a number of sound engineering reasons for a rectangular slot:
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It provides a challenge in the game that new pilots must master but, that aside, there are a number of sound engineering reasons for a rectangular slot:
- Defensibility and less chance that ships can be sniped on the pads
- Economical use of force fields
- Reducing speeds through the slot
- Much clearer definition of green and red sides for passing ships in the slot
- Encouraging pilots to match the rotation of the station interior before they enter
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If clicking your heels 3 times and spinning widdershins would just teleport us....
If I may quote Rich Rosen from back in the day: "many things are possible, but very few of them actually happen"
Alcubierre drives would require energy levels that would make them such powerful bombs you'd probably eradicate civilization the first time someone had a drive failure or weaponized a drive.
They are imaginary. All this stuff is imaginary. Once you start asking for realism in an imaginary world you're on a path to a strange place.
The scooping might be easy, but surviving in a solar atmosphere: that's the hard part.
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Hey I wasn't suggesting they're going to happen
and I wouldn't want to fall out with the founder of the Fuel Rats either - you never know when your gonna need to make that call! I was just saying they don't break general relativity, there is some science in there and, yeah, currently not possible but who knows what time and ingenuity will bring. So saying there won't be FTL ships kinda trashes the foundation I was building for my castle in the air - let us dreamers dream
Well a little OT so FWIW I think the mail slots are just fine as they are.
The stations themselves could also be hundreds of years old and the slots could have been considered huge at the time they were built, but as ships got bigger then the slots did not seem to be so big anymore.
Anytime you build something that a ship has to pass through people will build ships exactly the size that will just squeeze through.
Hence terms like Panamax and Suezmax. I guess with the Cutter we are getting close to the Mailslotmax class of ships.
Anything bigger may have to dock outside somehow.
Anyone who thinks the mail slot is a tight fit needs to look at the below picture. We have it easy.
CMDR CTCParadox
I have this problem parking the car after riding the motorcycle for weeks.
Good thing that side mirror folds in...
I think it's more stupid because it magically keeps the air in (although there's a lot of magic in Elite, like shields and FTL travel, particularly FTL travel without the inevitable going back in time stuff).
I would like them see them go back to the old airlock style in Frontier+FFE. At least that made sense.
I would like them see them go back to the old airlock style in Frontier+FFE. At least that made sense.
True, but ships navigating the Panama Canal locks don't just do it under their own power, their transit is controlled and guided by electric locomotives known as "mules" (a sort of mechanical docking computer I suppose).
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External docking would pose a whole new challenge given that the current large stations all rotate - a single large external docking slot at the other end of the axis might work or you could have a stationary hub attached to the axis with multiple slots.