Connectors and docking locations

[Altjira]

Im building a station for storage, transfer and ship maintanance. Im trying to build some docks for large ships that will be usable across as many designs as possible. Ive downloaded a few ships from here but I would also like your input: Where to you put the furthest out and most easily accessible connectors on your ships?
I generally have the ones on the nose, top, and bottom as the easiest to access, the ones on the side are usually recessed by engine pods and other protrusions making docking using them more difficult.
I would also welcome ideas for universal docking clamps, although theres only so much you can do with pistons, connectors, langing gear and merge blocks....

[Loues.S.Cat]

I typicaly dont build stations, but I use docking systems a lot. What are you trying to dock? i am fairly sure you cant go wrong by having an extended arm for docking. you may even want to consider putting it on a piston (since this wont effect a station). Personaly, I usualy have a heavy armour landing pad that has both a connector and a collector flush with the surface of the pad so smaller ships can land and/or dock safely (this can include small large ships, but usualy not), You could always scale this up to a larger area and incorperate retractable connectors and maybe even retractable landing gear to guide a ship in safely.
I'd also sugest using a red-zone setup (the red zone is for unloading only, and there is no stopping in the white zone) which has a sorter block behind it set to suck everything out of anything that docks there (handy for clearing out miners if there aren't enough refinaries available and other grinding/cargo ships. It also stops flowback from things like collectors trying to use the small ship for storage) You can change this to a togglable two way by using two sorter blocks, one facing each direction, just turn the outgoing one on or off depending on wheather you want to load or unload.
Honestly. I dont see any reason not to have a lot of connectors in diffrent areas of your station. You could even have extended arms just for the purpose. think Deep Space 9 if you're a trekky :p

[Old-gamer]

For ships that are "large" but not in the enormous class, I put the Connector on the bottom of the ship. That placement allows me to use the auto-docking feature of the Remote Control block and it causes the ship to orient itself better to the Connector on base. Using the Remote Control for auto-dock, descending onto the base's Connector has a much better success of the ship being level to the Connector port on base. It may be a little turned at times, but not sitting askew from the top of the Connector.

For the truly enormous ships, I don't even try to dock them or park them with a Connector. I just put an ample supply of solar cells on top of them for parking. When I park it, I turn off the Reactors and let the solar cells maintain the Thrusters, gyros, etc. I have also just turned off the Reactors on massive ships without any solar cells added. The mass of such a large ship typically keeps it in place anyway and I've never had one drift away or even move when left that way.

[Loues.S.Cat]

Indeed. for truly massive ships the best bet would probably be some sort of cargo shuttle.
Rather than docking two massive objects together, just have a little ship to do runs between them.

[Altjira]

Thank you all for the suggestions. Ive tried a variety of methods so far. The problem is I want to dock 4 - 8 ships of approximately red ship size, which would lead to huge sheets of armour panels or blast door sections to land on if I recessed connectors into landing pads. I like the idea of extendable docking arms, but im also trying to put in some loading and unloading docks close enough that ships docking would have their own little section of rented dockside with built in storage (for both materials and small craft). Best method so far Ive found it multiple pistons with triple connectors and landing gear attached. I can use the connectors to align the ships, draw them in and lock in landing gear. It also means I know how far I can expect the sides of ships to be from the dock, so I can use airlock doors for extendable maintainance platforns. Thoughts?

I know eventually Im gonna want to store these things INSIDE, and thats gonne be the end of my poor poor computer.

[Old-gamer]

Yes, be careful not to build your way right out of enjoying the gameplay in SE. Just for fun, I had built a very large fully enclosed bay for my largest drilling ship with a huge bay blast door that opens/closes using rotors. Using multiple sensors and an alignment screen, it also offers me the ability to get into a good zone for parking the ship inside the bay without hitting anything.

At the time, I was not aware that certain blocks could be more taxing than others for game performance. So, my bay has a large amount of Interior Blocks for the walls and ceiling. Long story short, I'm now in a position where I'm continually having to manage the size of my "world" is SE to avoid screen-lag performance issues (and I don't play on a server, just Survival).

[Badger]

If you're into mods, check this out

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=294619787&searchtext=docking


Alternatively, this is the method I use, with a connector and piston below it for transferring cargo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TrLOlPVj9Y