Creating reliable insta-undocks?

Communications Center General Discussion
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I am finding that many of the stations eject players perpendicular to the tactical overview display. Additionally, the station structures themselves don’t present a clear view of what constitutes a precise center.

Thus, I have been having a tough time creating reliable insta-undock bookmarks that are within 5 degrees of pure center. I’d say a majority of the time, my insta-undocks work maybe 60-70% of the time, with the rest required one-two seconds of extra align time.

Before suggesting sites or videos that show how this is done, please check to see if they are up-to-date. I haven’t been able to find anything that is recent. (I could be missing something, though.)

Is anyone currently able to create a 95%+ reliable insta-undock on any arbitrary station?

I know this next question will sound like a terrible idea re: ganking and what-not, but I’m curious if it’s possible:

Would gathering and building a publicly-available list of insta-undocks (over time; the number would be staggering, needing multiple per station) be possible? This feels like maybe something that would align with Signal Cartel , assuming it were even possible?

Just curious how you are all making your insta-undocks on stations that don’t align nicely with tactical overlay, and how reliable they are for you.

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For those stations I have used the manual flight controls to fly as nearly perpendicular as possible.

(There are Caldari stations which don’t align on the horizontal plane. Those are, IMHO, worse)

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Yes. Allow me to be thorough.

Before you dock, you activate your tactical overlay.

You undock, reorient your camera to behind your ship, facing straight forward from the undock. NOT the ship’s direction. You doubleclick to the horizon of your tactical, so your ship moves straight forward, away from the undock. You hit your mwd and start moving. Align your ship first, THEN hit the mwd.

All ships undock at a random five degree angle, which can be problematic, but we ignore that completely for now. You just keep moving. If you think it’s enough (155km at least, to be safe), you stop your ship and make a bookmark.

Then you warp to the station and dock.

You open the window with your bookmark and put it ready-to-be-use on your screen.

You undock, wait for it to show up and ASAP rightclick and warp to the bookmark. You need to be zoomed in to see your ship aligning to your bookmark, which it inevitably will. With your tactical still open, you check how far off your bookmark is from a straight line from the undock and correct manually.

Some camera settings might need adjustment to avoid the camera being all over the place instead of where it should be.

Making a good bookmark takes time. You can do this a lot faster, too, but then it’s not thorough and you asked for 95%+. You want your bookmark to be as straightest forward as you can set it up. The secret is to simply ignore the five degree angle by hitting warp as soon as you can.

At least that’s how it used to work.

That’s almost all there is to it, but I can expand.

One thing left is dealing with the black screen you get when you undock. When you undock for the first time after loading the game, the black screen takes longer. You can deal with this by first undocking in a pod, spamming ctrl+space to hit break and waiting for space to show up, so you can dock up again. The next time you undock things will go faster, helping you getting away safely.

Warning: At a kick-out station, where you pretty much immediately leave 0m you’ll be having a hard time docking up again.

Now let me teach you something about the physics of the game. I’m being thorough here and knowing the other side of the equation is in no way or form bad for you. On the contrary.

When someone wants to catch you insta-undocking, their best chance is to NOT use a disruptor but instead immediately trying to alpha your ass out of your ship. WHENEVER someone uses a module that somehow affects physics (in this case movement) it adds one server tick of lag, which helps you getting away.

That means that your best chances of getting away are when someone uses a point, or scram. Someone who tries to alpha you when you undock will have a higher chance of killing you.

What matters for you is minimizing the amount of time it takes for your ship to align towards the bookmark. The best way you can do this is by initiating warp as soon as possible. If that’s not possible for some reason, you have to keep adjusting your bookmark to the best possible spot, OR …

… you just keep undocking over and over again, making more and more bookmarks at different angles. Just how they happen eventually. You make a whole cloud of bookmarks at a distance far enough away that you can just pick the one that’s most appropriate for your undock-angle, minimizing align-time. It’s up to you how you organise that. You can do it visually by being zoomed in and looking into the right direction, or by naming your bookmarks appropriately.

There.

Source: me undocking literally thousands of time as -10, losing 2x battlecruiser V* in the process due to one single guy among literally hundreds who, for some reason, managed to catch me almost every single time I’ve instaundocked.

Hope that helps.

*that’s not actually possible. I lost it once during that time, and I’ve lost it another time some time else, but don’t remember when. I definitely forgot to upgrade my clone a few times. :slight_smile:

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Some tutorials I’ve seen recommend another step right after undock: stopping your ship. In practice I’ve found that it gives you more time to line up the camera correctly, and leads to more consistent bookmarks.

@The_Larold Yeah, stations not at zero bubble are SUPER annoying. This being EVE, I can imagine someone willing to collect/purchase a library of insta-undock bookmarks to resell later for ISK. In fact I can’t imagine that someone hasn’t already tried. :laughing:

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After leavingthe station I switch on the MWD and look back at the station to see how “straight” the ship is leaving it. I make small adjustment to the ships path. After saving the BM I test the undock with a “slower” aligning ship to see how instantly the warp is. If not good enough I start over again.
With the introduction of citadels and later the faction stations you almost don’t need insta undocks anymore,

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You just do what experts do and have a couple of instaundocks at slightly different angles and you just pick the best, it doesn’t need to be perfectly aligned as the warp will allow for a small margin of error

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Yeah, that would re-align your ship to the horizontal plane. That works if you want a straight one. I am so used to not being able to do that (aka waiting and then starting moving) due to being -10, I actually forgot about that, thank you!

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You can set a course for your ship holding the approach key, its homeworld style navigation. There is no need to look behind your ship to align the trail or any of that nonsence.

Fisrt you position your ship directly in the center of the undock port and stop, then you hold your default approach key and just draw a perfect straight line using the tactical overlay for alignment, once your ship gets moving in the direction you need to click set max speed to break the autopilot, if you dont do that your ship will stop once it reaches the end of the line you drew.

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That was a great instruction! :+1:

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