Keeping a Space Station in place...

So I'm trying to make a free standing space station which generally works as long as you don't dock anything large to it but as soon as a try docking a large ship to the side of it the thing just starts drifting off. What do I need to do to solve that? More mass? More thrusters? Or is there no way to dock 2 large things to each other without the game physics freaking out?

 

There's always the unsupported station option.

Other than that, consider turning off thrusters on your docked ships. Rotationally, if you haven't already, add a bunch of gyros to your station with the override option on.

That said, I haven't tried any truly massive stations so they do move slightly out of place, but they do stop and generally stay with a dozen meters of where I left them.

 

I think that shouldn't happen with connectors, only with landing gears, but anyway, there are more than one thing you can do.

First you can check the new option that force stations to be static without being anchored to a voxel, i can't remember exactly how it's called, something about static something , sorry, i can't remember, but it's pretty easy to identify by the name. That will make all stations in the game static, no more movement of any nature by any condition, so it's the fastest way if you are playing SP.
Second, yes, more thrusters and gyros will help. If the drifting is basically just a rotation, not a displacement, i'd put gyros with potency/power(I have no idea how it's called at not translated english game, but it's the force slider) at maximum and the no human control checkbox checked, so they will permanently try to keep the grid static: with enough gyros you can negate any rotation(especially if you place them near the center of mass of the grid). Thrusters will help too, but they are not as trustworthy, you will need more of them and are more expensive in survival... i always try first the gyros.
Third, as @SilentShadow said, turn off all thrusters and gyros in the docked ship, so they won't fight against the ones in the station.
Fourth, don't use landing gears or use them the less you can the better. Use connectors instead, they are not as strong a connection as the landing gears, but even knowing that just right now they are bugged and disconnect at world load, 90% of the time they are bug-free and are perfect for a station that isn't supposed to move, because you don't really need the stronger landing gear connection if you are not moving.

 

Why would you think that this shouldn't or wouldn't happen?

 

I think the issue is that the force being applied is greater than it should be. I had an issue many months ago where a little barebones fighter clamped (landing gear, boo, hiss) to a ship probably thirty times its mass was dislodging it and imparting a non-trivial velocity to it, forcing me to manually correct the motion.

 

anchor it a voxel.

if its a large station build a large light armor platform into a voxel then add a large merge block to both the voxel and your ship then merge them might need a tiny tug style ship to do it.

failing that make a ship with a basic ship with landing gear thrusters in all directions and attach its landing gears to the station and have its inertia dampers:ON
depending on how strong it is...it should stop all directional movement.
[yeah this one could work you could just hide the small ship inside the station somewhere....]

 

This point is it's a station that isn't anchored to a voxel. A massive construct shouldn't be getting pushed around by a little ship docking with it.

 

Add a pair of thrusters each direction and a few gyros. Select inertial dampers while seated in a control seat.

Connectors do odd things while docking.

 

If the game settings require voxel support for stations then anything that's not connected is basically a ship. If it's not connected to a voxel, it needs thrusters and gyros and for safety's sake I would make it a ship.

 

Irl a free-floating station is really just a very slow ship. The International Space Station also have thrusters, and in zero gravity and vacuum even the smallest push has an effect and must be countered because there is no friction. Granted it wouldn't be the first time SE applies stronger forces than it should, but the point stands.

 

I noticed that the voxel support button is gone in the stable version. What is the proper procedure for ensuring that true stations can only be built when attached to voxels?

Also I have players getting weird bugs when attaching ships to grids attached to voxels (asteroids). The new grid will often rotate unexpectedly burying much of the new station in the asteroid. However the collision grid will remain in its original orientation.

 

It's gone? I thought they recovered it in stable version too... i'm pretty sure it's there in dev version.
--- Automerge ---
And...

Exactly, one thing is that the game is applying too much force(or what seems too much force, which i'm not that sure), or just having some bug that applies force not only when the grids collide but while the grid is attached too, and other thing is that if you have 0 gravity and 0 friction you can bet the slightest touch will move totally massive things, maybe really slow, but they'll move.

 

For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. So the amount of force you collide with an untethered station is translated to acceleration based on the amount of force applied in relation to the mass of the station. Theoretically, a station that is bumped is going to accelerate. With no friction to stop it, the speed will continue to build at the rate of acceleration.

 

I think it has been renamed to unsupported stations or something like that.

 

The ISS is in sufficiently low in orbit that it experiences non-negligible atmospheric drag and it has to be re boosted into orbit using it's own thrusters periodically.

Connectors and landing gear have the ability to generate absurdly non-conservative forces that can fling even massive ships at terminal velocities from simple interactions.

Merge blocks magnetically attracting two ship/ship modules can also do some insanely overpowered stuff.

 

My suggestion that I have used several times is a remote control block and timer set to re-align the station on a gps waypoint every 45 seconds to a minute...

 

I think keen has the station thing turned off, prob will be fixed. If a station can not move then it does not need any physics simulation.
Give them a few weeks.

Until then add a few thruster in every direction, a few more opposite the dock. Kleptic's idea is awesome- see above.

 

Fixed stations are reenabled in dev. However personally I disable that option. I very much dislike the notion of infinite mass superblocks.

 

Alright here's the short version:

As-is on Dev Branche Station Voxel Support is enabled by default and cannot be disabled as before - that World Option is gone. (Technically.) A Station built in open space will turn into a Large Ship immediately upon seperating even a single block.
However, in update 01.157 they introduced a "new" World Option called "Unsupported Stations" which... essentially turns off Station Voxel Support. I'm not quite sure why they renamed that option; probably for clarity. Doesn't much matter to me either as long as it works. And it does: on Dev Branche you can now once again build stationary Stations in open space that will not budge - unless you forget to turn them into Stations or to enable that World Option (it is turned off by default).

Two things worth to note:
1.) Even with Unsupported Stations on you can stille future- or -World-Option-proof your Stations by anchoring them into Voxels; however trying to do that may or may not have interesting consequences:

These issues still exist as of this writing so i'm pretty sure they helped getting Unsupported Stations back.
2.) There is currently a minor bug going on where pasting a copied Station grid turns the pasted version into a Ship (the original persists as-is).