Docking Ports - Make them more than Aesthetic/Station Only

[MattyK]

So, I've had quite some time to play with Avorion now, but something I always found an oddity, was the lack of a fundamental block that could give such quality of life features as increasing the pickup radius of my vessel...

 

Then I noticed this lovely block;

"Docking Port [station Only]"

 

 

Over the last few hours in my adoration for the game and see more depth added, I started coming across ideas in how to make what seems like such a simple block, add a good deal of interactivity to an already brilliant early access game.

 

 

So may I present; the Docking Port 2.0

• Increases Resource and Item Collection Radius, up to a maximum of 2km
  
• Increases the Docking Radius of the vessel, allowing it to dock further away from the targeted station to a maximum of 2.5km (Very useful for larger capital ships and vessels)
  
• Allows a ship to dock with another ship to share Hyperdrive Range. While docked, the largest jump range is inherited, reduced by 1 sector per docked ship.
  

 

Now, you're probably thinking, "hang on a second, if we introduce ship to ship docking, we can introduce the boarders and the security, and suddenly an unimplemented feature finally begins to take shape..."

 

Well I'll probably make another thread for my suggestions on boarding, prisoners, ship to ship boarding weapons and all that, for now, I'll just finish off by listing the block requirements and tier differences.

 

Material Tier: All

Cost Tier: Medium-High (Between Computer Core and Shield Generator), this is a quality of life block that only really needs to be built once.

Build Restrictions: Inherits the two-plane open approach of Hangar building. At least one face must have clearance from the parent ship at all times to function

Crew Requirements: 0.5 Engineer Workforce and 0.5 Security Workforce per half (0.5) kilometre in function gained.

Docking Restriction: For Ship to Station, No Limits. For Ship to Ship, the ship attempting to dock must have a volume of less than 0.7 of the parent ship (Therefore giving reason to things like corvettes and marine frigates)

 

I'm sure you guys probably have something like this in the pipeline already, but just including even one of the suggested features above would give a nice little quality of life to the game.