What is it with the drifting?

Chaodiurn

Chaodiurn
Greetings,

So lately this happened to me: I tried to fit a rather large ship through the entry of a starport. Upon exit, another large ship of the same type tried to enter the station. Naturally, we both paid attention to where the greens light are. At first everything seemed to fit with very little space in between. Then, however, I felt what I always ignored before: my ship started to drift towards to middle of the entrance. As the same happened to him, this was quite problematic. Within seconds our ships clunk together in a mess of metal for the waiting Vulture pilot to laugh at.

"Look at 'ose traders," I nearly heard him mock, "too greedy for lasers, too stupid to dock."

Things went on as expected. Shields were challenged, and I reversed into the station with another ship locked in my hull, then did very weird twists to get him off and left the station with a fine for blocking the pad. Ever heard something of exit's first, fine-maker?!

I'd accept that it's the momentum of the station causing it. But Within the station none of this happens either, and there even is this automatic counter to it, that's most definitely turned on.

Thus, I must ask: what's it with the drifting?
 
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CMDR Atmosfera

C
i think its just when you are too close you magnetically start pulling to closest object-happened to me the other day i hit a ship and dragged it with me through the exit port but on anaconda it always tends to drag me to the top ceiling because when i clear the slot i have to be close to the top otherwise i will hit the bottom
 

Chaodiurn

Chaodiurn
Thing is, I tried to counter the drifting, with all the power my joystick would take. Helped nothing. If it was just the drift, my manual input should have changed something. It didn't.
 

Deleted member 38366

D
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Spanksh

Spanksh
sam445 said:
That drifting is probably caused by rotational correction going off for you and on for the other pilot.
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^This
The problem is that the rotational correction turns off within the mail slot. Imagine it like that: Within the slot rotational correction (theoretically) works by thrusting up (or down), following the rotation and towards the center of rotation to keep the distance the same. Once you stop following the rotation you will end up with slight inward momentum. If that's the real reason, no clue, but I guess it makes sense. Anyways I have experienced the same. I'm always drifting towards the middle. It's worse with ships who generally accelerate slower/drift more, so the explanation would make sense.
 
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Thanatos

T
My understanding (or what I always thought) was this was the Toast Rack trying to be useful and assist you with getting on centre.
 

drhay53

D
The station is moving, orbiting around something. I've always felt this 'drifting' as the station trying to move away from me :)
 

Spanksh

Spanksh
drhay53 said:
The station is moving, orbiting around something. I've always felt this 'drifting' as the station trying to move away from me :)
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That's just an optical illusion caused by the rotation ;) The station is moving (very fast, way faster than you can thrust in normal space), however when you are instanced with the station you move with it, so for you it is always stationary. It's the same for all objects like planet rings. There you can even see the sun rise or set (covered by the planet) on fast rotating planets. You can see the station move when you lock onto it and drop out of SC far enough to be placed in a separate instance, where you can see the marker rush across your screen. On fast stations throttling down to 30km/s in SC does the same.
 
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Noisy Cosmos

Noisy Cosmos
Yesterday I saw a post of a commander saying his ship was pulled to the center of the station's entrance. And the same day happened to me. I own a Python and never happened until yesterday... Maybe it's a bug. Just saying...
 

Meric

Meric
It's not a bug. The entrance to a station has a 'magnetic' field that always pulls you towards the centre of the docking port. It is supposed to make docking a bit easier in larger ships.

The bigger the ship, the bigger the effect and the further from the centre, the bigger the pull.

Moral of the story: Don't try and pass a T9 or anaconda in the docking port, you may get pulled into a collision.
 

Chaodiurn

Chaodiurn
Meric said:
It's not a bug. The entrance to a station has a 'magnetic' field that always pulls you towards the centre of the docking port. It is supposed to make docking a bit easier in larger ships.

The bigger the ship, the bigger the effect and the further from the centre, the bigger the pull.

Moral of the story: Don't try and pass a T9 or anaconda in the docking port, you may get pulled into a collision.
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So, the most dangerous parts of the game are those that are supposed to make things easier? I'm partly bypassing this issue from now on by having downsized the physical mass of my ship to that of a Python. Now, I am unable to get the game started due to connection errors. Maybe Frontier doesn't approve that sort of problem solving.

Be that as it may, my opinion is clear on this matter: Please, someone, make it stop! It's unnecessarily dangerous in the worst possible way.
 

Meric

Meric
It's been there since beta and there was some hearty 'discussion' about it when they put it in. So I think it is unlikely they'll change it now. My opinion: they have other things to work on that are more important (like Chaodiurn's connection problems).

These days I just go straight down the middle, can get a bit interesting in open!
 
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