Wiki / Ship sections / Docking port

Docking port

A docking port is a sealed hatch: one cell of collar with a graphite sleeve behind it, and nothing proud of the cell until it is used. Lock the ship you want, bring your port face up to its port face, and D clamps the two hulls together. The sleeves then reach across the gap and bridge it.

What a dock is NOT is a merge. The two ships stay two ships: two hulls, two pilots, two sets of controls, and nothing pooled between them. The clamp holds the pose you met in and does no more than that. One ship at a time flies the pair: the other ship's pilot until you take the helm with H, and you until you hand it back. D again lets go.

Flying the approach

Docking is one key, and everything before it is flying. Lock the other ship the way you lock anything - the dock is offered against your travel lock, not against whatever is nearest - and then close the gap yourself. RCS is the trim the last hundred meters wants: it pushes the hull along its own axes without turning it, which is exactly the motion an approach needs and the one a main drive cannot make.

Inside 80 m the docking sight draws itself: a flat cross over each port face, and a line running between the two faces with a tick on it for every cell of capture distance left. Square the two crosses up, stand the line perpendicular to them, then close the gap. The crosses turn green when the facing is inside the envelope, and the line turns green when the gap, the relative speed and the relative spin are. Three green and the chip lights.

Nothing flies the roll for you, and nothing is going to. Lining a port up on the roll axis by hand is the hard part of an approach, and it is meant to be.

The DOCK chip lights on the keybind dock only while a pair of ports is genuinely eligible, so the chip is the readout: if it is dark, something in the envelope is still wrong (or the target itself refuses - see Who lets you dock). Three things have to be true at once for the envelope alone.

• The gap. Ten meters or less, measured face to face between the two retracted ports - not between the two ships, and not between their centres. A port buried behind a wing measures from its own face like any other.
• The facing. The two ports have to look at each other within fifteen degrees. Roll does not count: the collar is a circle, so meeting one upside down is the same as meeting it level, and the clamp simply keeps whatever twist you arrived with.
• The speed. Five meters a second or less of RELATIVE motion, and five degrees a second or less of relative spin. Absolute speed is nothing here: two ships running together at 2 km/s are standing still as far as the other one is concerned.

You do not choose the ports. The game pairs the nearest eligible ones on the two hulls and picks the same pair every time for the same approach, so a ship carrying four ports docks on the one you flew to.

Who lets you dock

The geometry is only half of it: the DOCK chip also goes dark, and a request refuses, while the target itself will not have you. A target refuses while it reads Hostile to you, while it is on the Enemy side, while it is answering any ship's fire, or while its AI is actively fighting. A calm ally or Neutral lets you in, and a neutralized ship always admits a boarding, whatever side it was.

A dock already made is never re-judged this way - a ship under fire from someone else stays docked with you. Only you hitting a docked Neutral with a crew aboard forces the undock, at once (see Letting go).

What the clamp holds

The clamp is a single joint between the two hulls, made the instant you press the key, and it holds the pose you met in - the gap you crossed at, the angle you came in on, the roll you happened to carry. Nothing is snapped straight and nothing is tidied up.

Your drift comes with you. A dock never brings either ship to a halt: two hulls that met while coasting keep coasting, together, and a pair caught in a well falls the way one hull would. The clamp only takes away the motion of one hull relative to the OTHER.

A docked pair flies as one body, and exactly one ship flies it. Every dock starts neutral: the other ship keeps the helm, its autopilot and its orders fly the pair, and your drive, your helm, your RCS and your maneuver keys stand down. RCS mode ends too, even with Shift still held: release it and press it again once you have the helm. The mode chip reads NEUTRAL, and the blocked chips stay on the dock, dark. An AI partner holding the helm does not fly its patrol or orbit while docked - it holds the pair still for you instead, and picks its route up where it left off once you let go.

H takes the helm, and the chip reads RELEASE HELM. Now your throttle, your RCS, your mouse and G, O and X fly the pair, and the other ship stands down: its orders pause where they are, and pick up again when you hand the helm back with H. Whoever flies, the pair is flown from its combined mass and balance point: the turn is shared over both hulls, the drive is trimmed about the pair's balance point, and the autopilot brakes for the whole pair, so it turns and stops like one ship rather than one hull dragging the other. Only the flying ship's engines burn. Z still drops a maneuver without letting go of the clamp. Your guns, your radar and your point defense are untouched either way.

If the game cannot measure the pair, neither ship flies it and the mode chip reads HELM FAULT until it can. H cannot take the helm then, and its chip reads HELM FAULT too, dark. The blocked chips leave the dock until the pair measures. If you held the helm when the fault came, H still hands it back, but you cannot take it again until the pair measures. G on the map refuses with the fault. The clamp holds, and D still lets go; the next dock starts clear.

Only then do the sleeves move. Both ports reach 5 m out over about a second, which bridges a full cell of gap; at a shorter gap the two sleeves simply overlap inside each other and read as one tunnel. They are skin, not structure: the clamp is already holding before they start, and an extended sleeve never touches the other ship.

Letting go

D again lets go, the same way O again drops an orbit. Either ship can press it, and neither needs the other's permission - the ship you docked with can leave while you are still sitting there. Each ship flies itself again the moment the clamp goes, and the helm goes with it: the next dock starts neutral.

A dock has no timer and no drift. A pair stays docked indefinitely, because nothing you do at the controls can end it - only the verb can, or damage. A maneuver does not end it either: ORBIT, GOTO and STOP fly the whole pair.

The other endings are damage. Shoot the port off either hull, or kill either ship, and the clamp goes with it; the surviving port stows its sleeve and is free to dock again. A port is the lightest thing on a hull at 90 health, so a dock in a firefight is a dock on borrowed time. A crewed Neutral is an exception: it holds the dock while a third ship shoots at it, but YOUR hit on it ends the dock at once, whole port or not. A derelict has nobody aboard to let go.

Variants

One port ships. The Utility Workship and both Frame Tenders carry one on the port flank, and the Line Warship carries one on each flank. Bolt one onto any other hull in the ship editor to fly a ship that can dock, or fly the docking_approach example, which hands you a tender built for the job. It takes neighbours on every face except the one it docks through - that face is the hatch. See Ship sections for mods for the numbers a mod can change, the capture envelope among them, and Events for the two edges a scenario scripts a dock with.