The only method I could think of is some weird drone type arrangement, but it would need to live inside the sub when not extended and I have no idea how the game would react to a drone attempting to dock to a station. You'd need to give up part of the top deck for it's 'docking bay' and probably do some trickery with hulls without gaps (like an upside-down moon pool) to keep the water out when it's 'extended'. You can't change or move hulls or shell pieces dynamically in-game, they are fixed. Maybe someone could do it with a major mod, but it would need to alter the game at a fundamental level and I stay well away from that kind of thing (would likely be very unstable and incompatible with vanilla game versions).

Technically those wings are just decoration, you can dock and they won't get in the way, although they might be visible inside the station!

Easiest thing is to just have a fixed docking tower (or no tower at all - just a docking port) and be done with it, make a feature out of it and enjoy playing the game.

Yeah would need a shuttle hatch, which wouldnt work as a main hatch for your sub. Also an FYI, the front facing docking hatches will never be recognized by the game as a docking hatch to auto dock to outposts.

Was SUPER disappointing when I spent 8h making a sub with forward facing docking hatch only to realize the bloody devs didnt script outposts to even account for them.

Another tip is to throw the default vanilla docking hatch item assembly in to the depths of hell where it belongs and make your own. That thing is about 3 layers of over complicated nonsense that doesnt even let you leave your sub if not docked. Totally useless item assembly.

The devs made a great game, but they are legit bad at making subs. You can use one of my subs and copy what you like for your sub, they have many fun systems. Mostly the airlocks, hatches, auto regulated batteries, an power systems would interest new players to the sub editor though. Lots of it is literally just crazy stuff I wanted to see if I could do like giant laser beams and making a true solo, no bots, sub that could complete the campaign (thats what the sub Solo Leveling is).

In general it is a good idea to look at other peoples subs to see how they did things you want to do when you are first starting out. Learned many tricks that way. (the folders go in the barotrauma/localmods folder then enable the mods in the ingame menu to load them up in sub editor btw.)

https://mega.nz/folder/zJEiUKTZ#8GOtvHtT77I_-FIe_HfUiA

https://mega.nz/folder/PY1xybZa#Ge8iIhAYXYdhE8bpe0vs3w


Copy whatever you like for yourself. Just dont upload my circuits or subs to the workshop as your own and we cool. And if you actually want to use them in campaign let me know, ill explain all their systems functionality so you can use them. Which will take awhile, so set aside some time to read. Thats why they not on workshop, would take me an hour per sub just to do the workshop page and desc for them, cant be bothered as I make them for myself to use.

Be sure to turn off structures when viewing them in sub editor though. I went hard af on the props for those.

Originally posted by Buggy Boy:

Technically those wings are just decoration, you can dock and they won't get in the way, although they might be visible inside the station!

That's great, i will just do a normal docking hatch instead. Even though i still think it would be cool with an extendable configuration. Perhaps in the future if the game will allow it at some point. Thanks a lot for the inputs!

Originally posted by AlienJesus:

Copy whatever you like for yourself. Just dont upload my circuits or subs to the workshop as your own and we cool.

I would never. Thanks for the inputs, i will bury the extendable hatch idea for now, and focus on more achievable things. I will check out your uploads this weekend at some point.


As a side note, i got the booster working for my underwater spaceship. If anyone's interested in having 20 seconds of fun when firing the first and second stage(its FAST haha), let me know, i will try and upload it on workshop in that case. See the whole thing in the screenshots here:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/profiles/76561197970376583/screenshot/2061011885069424248/

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/profiles/76561197970376583/screenshot/2061011885069425507/