Feedback #18844
Feature Request - Allow docked vessel to remain stand-alone craft if player chooses
Description
Here's the idea. When we dock a ship to a station, the combined cluster adopts the name of the highest ranking name configuration. It becomes difficult to keep tabs on vessels that we reuse if they are docked to another station because they no longer appear in the tracking station.
I propose a pop-up menu that pauses the game after docking is completed to prompt for a choice.- Dock to {vessel name}
- Join {vessel name}
If the player chooses to dock, then the ship location will not show "in orbit of Kerbin" or "landed on Mun" for example. It will say "docked to {vessel name}" and taking control of it will still take control of the combined station and docked vessel.
This would make more sense with ships docking to stations because the ship should not become part of the station. On the other hand, you may need to attach modules to grow the station, in which case those parts do become part of the station.
History
#1
Updated by MaltYebisu almost 6 years ago
Updated by Is it necessary to pause the game to do this? How about this being an option you select on the docking port(s) after docking?
Maybe some sort of indicator on the docking port model would be possible.
1. Docked (default; this happens when you dock two vessels)
2. Merged (make the two vessels one vessel)
I can think of many hurdles that would have to be overcome to implement this change. But having the option would be neat.