The Goliath's dockbay is currently very small. Due to a thick shield layer on top of it, it is hard enough to dock a small ship into. With large ships such as Behemoth's, particularly when heavily loaded, it becomes stupidly difficult.

While the Goliath is supposed to be a poor man's capship, I think it can do with a decent dockbay while keeping it's heavily nerfed shields and firepower and lower cargo space. This wouldn't seriously destabilize its status as a low-grade capship.

As shown in the image below, the Goliath's dockbay is inside a box-like projection at the bottom:


The dockbay faces the back of the Goliath, with a slight outward tilt so it isn't completely parallel to the rest of the ship. The bottom turret of the Goliath is situated on this box.

Suggestion is to completely remove the box-like projection, replacing the resultant "hole" with a larger dockbay. A rough idea is shown in the image:


The white box is the proposed dockbay. It would be larger than the current dockbay, unaffected by the thick shield, and be perpendicular to the ship.
The turret currently situated on the box can be shifted to the main body of the ship, right in front of the dockbay. The proposed position is the red circle.

Two videos docking a Behemoth XC carrying 1 Fused Composite Plating into a Goliath. This is by no means a very heavily loaded Behemoth. This much mass is a regular for manufacturers.

This video shows the docking in first person, with Mouselook on. It can be seen that apart from being knocked off by the ship itself, you actually have to turbo and "push through" the thick shields which are invariably triggered.

This video shows why the phenomenon in the previous video occurs. The Behemoth is atleast 2x larger than the dockbay. In third person with Mouselook off, it's a matter of wiggling around till something works rather than carefully aiming into the dock.

We probably aren't going to do the requested solution here, but we will look into the issue.

I believe I requested a fix for this quite some time ago, and one was actually made, but it may not have been shipped due to an oversight (like someone thinking it was released, but it wasn't).

Anyway, we will take a look, I can promise that much.

I believe I requested a fix for this quite some time ago, and one was actually made, but it may not have been shipped due to an oversight

We checked, and the requested fix was put into production a long time ago. Which isn't to say it could be tweaked further, but it was tested for docking with a Behemoth (but not by me).

you actually have to turbo and "push through" the thick shields which are invariably triggered.

So, first of all, this is incorrect. The shields are not preventing you from docking. They're a visual effect triggered by the collision damage. (Otherwise you could never dock with, say, a Capella, while someone was shooting it).

Secondly, docking any heavy ship requires a degree of precision flying. It's common to basically "hold" your brakes while briefly releasing and doing micro-navigations to align yourself and minimize overshoot. If you "bounce around" the way your videos show, it's definitely going to present a problem.

Again, I'm not ruling out tweaking the Goliath dock in some way, but I want to make sure this isn't just an issue of visual-confusion over the shields.

You can approach almost perfectly and still bounce around due to what I assume is the collision boundaries of both the xc/ goliath or maybe it's just due to the size of the xc compared to the Goliath's dock. I'd suggest widening the area where the Goliath's docks accept it as docking or make the Goliath or dock a bit larger. It would really be a welcomed QoL change.

Just test out docking with the Goliath in an xc and see what you think

Just to add, it's even tough as a PC player so I can't imagine what it's like on mobile. I get the point of precision skills in combat, but is having to dock a ship with another in an extremely precise manner really adding value to the experience of the game?

While docking with a goli is yes, difficult, you can get used to it.
But by shifting the "docking trigger" (what knows when u are near the ship and docks you) could be made larger, or moved a slightly bit rearward.
Thats just my thought

But by shifting the "docking trigger" (what knows when u are near the ship and docks you) could be made larger, or moved a slightly bit rearward.

That's what we already did, and would be likely to do again. There is a trade-off, in that you may find yourself docking "accidentally" more easily. I don't think you'll be able to accidentally "re-dock" anymore during launch, as that should be locked out for a second or more. But, those are the secondary challenges of extending out the "docking zone" further beyond the bay itself.

There is a gap of atleast 3-4 seconds between auto-dock so if you undock and try to dock in under that time (seen when you position your capship such that you undock straight into the dockbay of a station), you need to manually press Activate to dock.

Also, maybe the "range" of the dockbay could be made user configurable (up to a limit) so if someone wants their dockbay to be relatively easy to dock in, they can increase the range, while if they want to prevent accidental docking, they can reduce range. I'm not sure on how hard to execute this would be though.

There is a gap of atleast 3-4 seconds between auto-dock

Right. I mentioned that above. But, it doesn't necessarily cover all situations, particularly if you're launching in a ship that's really massive ("XC full of Samo" type case), or in some other difficult maneuvering situation (close quarters asteroid field). There's an intentional difference between the size of the docking zone and the period of time where re-docking is locked out, and we're now adjusting that difference.

Anyway, no, we are not going to make the docking zone a player-configurable concept. But yes, this may result in auto-docking at times that are not intended. We'll see how it shakes out. Best I can say is that we'll take a look.

Re-working the 3D object, physics hull, and re-exporting all assets across all platforms, is pretty time consuming. So, that is not a priority.

Making it easier to dock by extending the zone will have combat implications.

Making it easier to dock by extending the zone will have combat implications.

Could you be more specific about whether you think that is a good or bad thing, and what specific ramifications you find concerning?

Obviously, any improved ability to dock will impact combat that centers around docking with Goliaths to re-arm. But, assuming reasonably minor changes, I don't see an obvious problem with that?

Just moving the dock trigger by a few meters is not going to make a big difference, but would really help when having to dock a very heavy XC into it.

the easiest way to dock is: dont fly your ship directly into the door. fly UNDER your ship as if the top/roof of your ship was going to hit the bottom of your goliath dock..

..in my case i simply align the top edge of my screen with the bottom of my dock like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5R350EMhGg

adjust the idea as necessary based on your orientation.