"SAM and Spug's on utility ships, and PAM and Spug's on mining ships" - Yup, I'm thinking of swapping out PAM for Spug's script on the utility ships, keeping the PAM & SAM set up I have on shuttles and using Spug's script for the military ships

Regarding PAM being senile, I did some more experimentation. It actually works fine, the 2m waypoint granularity just wasn't good enough for my tight early game hangar. Hence, it knocked into everything, trying to go straight between those arbitrary 2m waypoints it placed wherever it felt like.

Manual waypoints with SAM, or better Spug's, work much better in such a tight docking situation. SAM's LCD path docking is neat, and has the benefit of not having to set it up for each ship. Spug's waypoints are more precise, especially if you fiddle with the accuracy settings a little, but you have to record them for each ship.

Additionally, I've been finding the gravity alignment function to be extremely useful when trying to dig straight tunnels. Aint no thing worse than trying to fly through a tight crooked 800m shaft.

So I've been finding myself using SAM and Spug's on utility ships, and PAM and Spug's on mining ships. Along with all my other (way too many) scripts, fo course.

Yeah, I'm sure I can squeeze in an thruster or two

Oh one more thing is that Spug's demands thrust in all 6 directions, which might be aproblem with your atmospheric ships. I've had to bolt on a few thrusters to make it work.

Ahh, I might have had that issue with an older version then (its been a few years since I tried it)

Isy's ship refueler keeps one battery on auto, cycling through them, so that the ship is never actually without power. I haven't had any issues with it.

I haven't been using MMasters AutoLCDs (except on the hercules) and Whip's SIMPL for simplicity, but when I can get around to the military designs then those are definitely being included ;)

"I can just fly to somewhere over my base and hit a button." - yup, that was the intention with PAM on this build, but now that Spug's autodock v2 is out, I'll probably go through and replace scripts.

And yes, FSD v2 is also on the to do list, but I have irl things to take care of before I can dive into SE and continuing the ISL fleet.

Isy's ship refueler I used to use, but stopped because a combination of FSD and some toolbar buttons did the same job, and there was (at the time I used it) an annoying moment where the ship would be without power as it disconnected first, then switched batteries off recharge, which caused other scripts to not play nicely.

I've found that Spug's v2 works wonderfully if all you need is pathing into a hangar and docking.

It's really precise, and really fast. Still have to fly home myself, but I can just fly to somewhere over my base and hit a button. Can't put a price on convenience.

I seem to add these to all of your ships that I've printed and used so far. I use Digi's micro timer and micro programmable block mods to make it easy to add more timers and PBs to vanilla blueprints without ample remodelling.

* Update FSD (v1 doesn't work at all sometimes)
* Add Spug's or replace PAM, depending on ship.
* Isy's Ship Refueler, along with 2 timers for docking and undocking automation tied into it.
* Whip's SIMPL and Artificial Horizon
* Automatic LCDs for detailed readouts that FSD can't manage. I'm a huge fan of InvList and PowerTime on ships, and Damage is useful to figure out if you've knocked something, but not hard enough for SIMPL to pick it up.

Ahh right, well I think PAM might be getting a bit senile, since it hasn't been updated in a while.

Yeah I saw that Spug made a V2 of his script, but I haven't tested it out yet, perhaps it will be a good replacement for PAM on some ships, like this one.

PAM does have a cargo fill readout somewhere (sorry, I haven't opened up SE in a while), but that function was kind of made redundant since I put Fancy Status Displays in everything (another script I need to update!).

Yep, thanks! I actually tried what you described a few times, but every time I try to have PAM dock inside my hangar, it just smashes into something. The connector being 10m into a 15x10m opening, I didn't think it was too tight to get in like that. That'll teach me to test in creative instead of my super hard resource strapped survival world.

I've successfully used Spug's autodock script on bigger ships with no issues. And I'm currently trying to make SAMv2 work, since that could in theory just "go home" from anywhere on the planet, but it struggles in tight spaces even with path docking.

Another thing I've seen you mention is that you use PAM to "keep an eye on cargo load". How exactly does that work? Do you just keep the info page open on the screen?

I record a PAM path from the dock to just outside the hangar, which I only have to record the path once, as PAM saves it.

Then when I want to park I fly back until I have line of sight on the hangar entrance (end of the PAM path) and tell it to go home.

PAM will fly in a straight line to the first way point (just outside the hangar) and then follow its path back to the dock.

This way I only ever have to dock manually once, even if the connector is tucked away around a corner somewhere. Unless it is docked to a ship instead of a base, then I have to do a new path after relocated the mothership.

I'm not sure what you mean by the meandering, but I hope that answers some of your question?

Out of curiosity, when you say you use PAM for autodocking, what exactly do you mean? Do you just record a path every time you undock, and then let the script undo the path back "home"? Seems like that would result in a fair bit of meandering, depending on what you do after undocking.