Locking

It is possible to form a somewhat stable connection between 2 different ships. This guide explains how to do that. There also is a video guide on this topic.

Explanation

Before locking

After locking. (Notice how the thruster dead zone would normally not allow for the bottom part to be this close)

The goal of locking is to move a piece of armor inside another ship such that it can not escape anymore. One can accomplish this using a bug that can accomplish armor clipping through 1 tile wide solid objects.

For that to work, your ship needs to travel at just under 21 m/s entering a lock (Speeds from 15 to 22 m/s can work, but just under 21 gives the most consistent results). Some of the many possible lock setups are shown in the pictures on the side.

The game just does not seem to update the games collisions often enough to detect those at certain speeds.

Only some of the ways you can build locks. The third lock is the best one as it is the cheapest and lightest. Armor-structure hybrid pieces do not have hit boxes on the structure parts, marked in red.

You can use the developer modes "show fixtures" mode to reveal the hit boxes, which are after offset from where the part is visually shown to be. That makes seeing what is going on a bit easier.

Making a ship more compact

The easiest way to do locking is to separate a part from your ship and then connect it again, as it will be correctly lined up automatically. You mostly want to do this to ignore placement restrictions like the thruster exclusion zones. To lock, follow these steps:

• (Optional) Enter developer mode and "show fixtures" so that it is more easily to see what is happening.
• Make your 2 part ship and add a half of the lock to each part.
• Connect the 2 parts using some structure and explosive charges to remove the structure in a way that does not impede the locking sequence
• Test it: Explode the charges and auto fire thrust. Set the speed very low such that you can watch the speed of the ship at the moment just before impact.
• If the locking fails, you probably need to modify the speed of your ship. You can do this by:
  • only firing certain thrusters
  • Adding or removing weight from the ship
  • Sometimes the explosive charge can give the ship a pulse in the wrong direction and knock it off course. You can combat this by using symmetrical structure connections or by using a counterweight.

Other applications for locking work similarly.

Combiner ships

Ship 2 tries to lock onto ship 1

The first combiner ship. A rail kite by Coolgamertag. The stopping structure is a bit outdated.

Combiner ships are multiple ships that work as one and which are controlled by multiple players. You can just use the same locking procedure as above, but the issue you encounter is the line-up. You get that you can make structure stoppers as shown in the picture and then just treat it like a connected ship scenario.

The also is a second method: When ships spawn into a game of elimination they will automatically be lined up provided:

• The ships are in the same team
• The ships face the right directions. You can manipulate the spawning orientation by changing the ships flight direction. Just remember to change it back in game.
• There are not any other players on the same team that spawned in between. You can either wait for the player to leave or you can prevent this by entering the team in the lobby (this might be necessary for setups that require a fixed distance).

Lock-breaks/picks

Locks sadly are not all that stable and there are various scenarios where they can break. Generally, locks break because a high amount of rotational speed is generated:

• 

  This lock would be slightly cheaper than the standard lock, but it sadly is very unstable.
  You already say that there are many different part combinations that can be used for locking. Most of them have the same stability, but there are a few which do not perform as well. One example is provided on the side.
• If your ship is very light, it might generate enough rotational speed to break the lock just by turning. You can test this in creative mode by setting the speed high and just letting the ship rotate. Very slight adjustments can cause or prevent this from happening. Some ships which have "insignificant" asymmetry only break the lock when rotating in one direction but not the other. This is generally not a concern in pvp games, as you need to have rotated for quite a while for the lock to break.
• Shield bug can push an opponent away, but also puts a lot of force on your ship in a very short time. Shield bugs very consistently break locks and should be avoided. Your opponent might even try to "lock pick" you by purposefully cause a shield bug.
• Crashes sometimes break locks. It depends on the speed and angle of the crash. Higher speeds make the lock more likely to break.