Docking Bay Questions: Plz help!

[Naiazu]

I have some questions about docking bays. Thank you for reading and responding!

1. I read on the forum that "A construction yard counts as a docking bay, and since both construction yards and docking bays must be on an external slot to function, there is no point in adding docking bays to space ports." Is this true? I have also read other conflicting posts to this statement.

2. I've noticed that the auto designer priorities the construction bays (which make sense) but fills the rest of the hanger bays with fighter bays and ignores adding extra docking bays. Am I wrong in adding more docking bays, or are the docking bays on the construction yards sufficient for day-to-day private sector business?

3. Sometimes I have noticed that some ships enter spaceports and others don't when interacting with docking bays. I feel like the ones that don't physically enter the docking bay have a faster throughput. Is this true?

[zgrssd]

1. As the construction yard has every property of the Docking Bay (Docking Bays + Throughput) and my Autodesigner never puts docking bays into Spaceports, I would say that is correct.

2. Honestly you want less and smaler docking bays.
Shuttles are entirely sufficient - and leagues faster - to transfer cargo, fuel or doing construciton work.

3. Yes. This is a design mistake I would say. I reported it a while ago as a bug.

[Naiazu]

Thank you for the reply! I wont make spaceport designs that add more docking bays anymore.

[Spidey]

Given how ass backwards it would be that fighter bays somehow work despite being internal but docking bays don't, I feel this question could do with some clarification.

The ship designer recognizes docking bays items in non-external slots and it makes very little sense that space ports, places where hordes of ships ought to be dropping off or picking up cargoes, can only use the single docking bay built into the construction yard item.

If that's how it actually works then I dare say the game should be more explicit about it. Though to be honest, I think it's a totally unreasonable way for it to work.

[zgrssd]

Internal/External currently only decides what is shown on the model. There is no gameplay effect.

[Lunalis]

now this made me wonder... i have my teekan spaceport with two construction yards... and i left the game running a while on 4x speed.

not a single freighter docked there. everyone used tiny shuttles and where flying away again after 2 seconds.

than i saw on a resort base that the passenger ships actually dock there.

Screenshot_13.png (1.06 MiB) Viewed 1470 times

so i wondered why noone docks at the spaceport anymore... i saw ships getting constructed flying out the the hangars... and with zenox and human spaceports ships also flew into the hangar bay often.
and i was sure i saw some ship fly into the teekan hangar before... i think it was an escort for retrofit.
so why do they avoid it?

i changed one construction yard to a docking bay... but that didnt do anything noticeable.
than i saw this:

Screenshot_12.png (1.26 MiB) Viewed 1470 times

a freighter with a different design actually went and docked there to unload.

conclusion:
the teekan freighters are TOO FAT to fit in these TINY hangar bay slots. so they dont even try it and always just use these 2 second shuttles.
so it makes it irrelevant if you have two construction bays with 2 docking capacity... or one construction bay and one docking module for 3 total capacity... if noone even can dock anyways and shuttles are way superior.

also a throughput of 400+ per second feels way too much. that is 2 seconds for 1000 items out of a small freighter.
400 per sec on construction yards with 1 bay
450 per sec on docking modules with 2 bays

maybe the construction yard should be 20 per second with 1 bay able to unload/load one ship at a time.
the docking module would have 50 per sec through put with 2 bays able to load/unload 2+ ships at once.

if ships dock to these modules they get unloaded at 100% rate... if ships cant dock (too fat for the docking bay size) and have to use shuttles that would limit the rate to 10% of the module that services them. 2 per second for construction yards and 5 per sec for docking modules.

yea unloading one freighter with 1000 cargo would take forever then... so numbers should be adjusted to what works better than 20/2 and 50/5 ... 400+ is way too quick though, especially when they dont need to dock, that is why when shuttles are used its reduced to 10%, as a ship docking on the station at the same time SHOULD be unloaded quicker than one who doesnt dock and uses shuttles.


back in DW1 docking bays actually mattered a LOT more than they do now in DW2... and you had to have like 20 on later spaceports to even keep up with all the freighters that come by and it worked great.

i guess its the jump to 3d and "not wanting models to clip intoeachother" that make this so weird now, as 20 freighters trying to squeeze into one docking bay migh tbe a bit of a congaline. (than again if you have two docking bays.. use one for landing and one for exiting and just let 20 freighters congaline infront of the landing one and if you have capacity for two docks.. let two land and the rest wait untill they undock, than let the next two dock. but this would be not using shuttles atall. so thats why the reduction to 10% above.)
i love all the little shuttles going around in DW2, but it is weird when 10 freighters arrive at your spaceport... one of them moves to dock in your hangar bay while the other 9 just stop and drop stuff off in 2 seconds with shuttles and are off again before the first freighter even managed to dock yet.

i feel like docking bays should always be "external visible on the model"... so if this teekan spaceport has 4 docking bays (2x100, 2x50) all 4 of them should be visible and ships should be able to dock on all 4 of them... make the size 100 ones doubble as big as the size 50 ones able for i.e. two ships to dock at once.
but i guess some stations would have to be model changed... i.e. the teekan spaceport scaled up so the hangar is big enough for small freighters to dock in it, like how passanger ships can dock at resort base bays.

or even more detailed:
if we take the teekan picture above with the freighter docking as example:

-if that module is a docking bay it could look like it now just bigger so ships can actually land there (atleast all teekan civilian ships should be able to land in a docking bay ! if other races are too fat, that is fine!)

-if that module would be a construction yard, it would look different and not have this entry hole, but pylons and cranes sticking outside of it. and when ships get build they would appear in that area next to the station and slowly change from wireframe gfx to hull gfx as they get build (and they would be big enough for all shiptypes to be build in it, i.e. battleships)... if no ship is under construction than a freighter could fly into the pylon bit and "dock" there to unload (at a lower rate as its designed to construct stuff)
something like this for example on the side of the hull:

Screenshot_14.png (227.57 KiB) Viewed 1470 times

-if that slot is used for fighter bays, than it would show alot of little "hangar doors", instead of one open docking bay it would be 4 or 8 or 16 depending on what fighter bay is equipped. and fighters would primary launch out of these little doors and land there.
ofcoruse no other ships can dock at these as they just for fighters to start and land.
as example here, how this has 4 little doors for fighters:

Screenshot_15.png (1.68 MiB) Viewed 1470 times

[Naiazu]

Wow, that pretty much incapsulates all my questions and frustrations. Good job on the research! I think those were some really interesting design fixes to docking bays. I like the idea of meaningful decisions. If you use hanger slots for docking bays it's better for economy, but you won't have as many fighters if you get raided.

[zgrssd]

conclusion:
the teekan freighters are TOO FAT to fit in these TINY hangar bay slots. so they dont even try it and always just use these 2 second shuttles.

"I am not fat!
I just have a heavy keel!"

[OrnluWolfjarl]

1. It's true to an extend. Yes, construction yards act as docking bays (even if they are constructing something). Here's the thing though: Construction yards cost 100 space, docking bays cost 50 space. So if you want high throughput and don't care about having extra yards, then docking bay is the way to go. Furthermore, space port hulls only have a certain amount of 100-size bay (purple) slots. So if you want more docking bays than available yards, then you can use those slots. But usually the priority is to be able to construct ships faster, so getting as many construction yards as possible on your spaceports is the way to go.

2. The designer prioritizes giving your ships and stations good offense and defense capabilities. It doesn't always make the optimal or right choices. Feel free to override it if you don't like its choices. Having said that, I prefer small fighter bays early on. 1-2 bays give more than enough throughput for most planets. And Fighters are a very decent and cheap on size defense early on.

3. Yes, it's presumably a bug.