As I was testing how easy and how close it is possible to get from a roid, I was lag-disconnected, and when I rejoined I found my ship slightly CLOSER to the roid than would be safe:
http://jesrad.free.fr/inroid.jpg

I think that doing it a couple more times would have maybe "pushed" my ship completely inside the roid, where I'd be shielded from hits and out of other players' view. Perfect ambush... but I don't think it's right.

i would have done it once :)

There are problems with asteroids collision meshes not exactly matching the texture meshes. This is a well known issue.

It's not related.

Here's a shot ViciousNanite kindly did, after trying to shoot at me through the roid at my demand:
http://jesrad.free.fr/inroid2.jpg

The shots did not pass the roid, I was virtually indestructable. It took me three logoffs to get enough offset and get inside the roid. Other things I've discovered:
- if I accelerate away from the roid, I don't get damage
- if I spin in any direction, or accelerate further inside the roid, I get negligible or zero damage and get pushed outwards slightly
- I seem to get offset only in the same one direction with each logoff

Abusing this bug could turn out pretty nasty, I guess :/ In the meantime, I'm leaving my character there in case it helps the devs correct it.

http://jesrad.free.fr/inroid3.jpg
That's what happens if I try to shoot from the inside: the shots collide with the INSIDE of the roid and don't get out.

We've all done this before, in s404. The only solution is to do collision detection on recently reconnected clients and past-calculate their trajectories had they hit the roid and bounced off.

Or maybe store the coordinates more accurately ? The ship seems to "fall" into a larger, discrete grid of positions instead of keeping its exact position.

Either that, or you're pulling stuff out of your backside and typing it up before looking to see what it looks like.

Coordinates are plenty accurate. It's just that when the server calculates the paths of disconnected users, it doesn't take into account other objects. If somebody is disconnected via their ISP and takes the full 60-second timeout, they will fly in a straight line, invincible and able to pass through solid objects for 60 seconds. I'd say that they should at least put in colision detection.

I was staying still though ? Bah, you're probably right.

Our collision detection uses OBBTrees, not BSPs, so it doesn't have a concept of "inside" and "outside", it just collides against the hull of the object. It would be nice for a variety of things to have BSPs instead but OBBTrees have many virtues of their own.

The easier solution is just to store their last known "good" position and not do any dead reckoning.

meh, this is old news.. i used to l mine roids like this untill people learned how to shoot into astroids...

Also, this can be used to get inside 1 way exits at stations