Was it Elite Dangerous? Stations grant docking clearance if you’re within range when you request it; I think it’s about 7500 meters. Check out the in-game the tutorials. One of them teaches this.
If they were playing online, it’s likely all of the pads were full. You can either wait for someone to leave, or super cruise out and back in to load a new instance with available pads.
Good point. I forgot about that possibility because I don’t spend much time playing in Open mode.
The same thing tends to happen on stronghold carriers in Solo mode, I suspect because Frontier programmed the game to spawn a bunch of NPC ships eager to dock with those carriers when a mini-instance is created. You can be the only player within light years, and still have to wait several minutes for all those NPCs to leave before you can dock.
Unfortunately it was due to being “friends only.” Player fleet I guess? I just couldn’t figure out how to filter them out before I got there and kept coming across them.
That range one caught me out once but I figured that one out since it tells you to come closer. I’m going to take that tutorial suggestion though. Cheers!
Was it Elite Dangerous? Stations grant docking clearance if you’re within range when you request it; I think it’s about 7500 meters. Check out the in-game the tutorials. One of them teaches this.
If they were playing online, it’s likely all of the pads were full. You can either wait for someone to leave, or super cruise out and back in to load a new instance with available pads.
Good point. I forgot about that possibility because I don’t spend much time playing in Open mode.
The same thing tends to happen on stronghold carriers in Solo mode, I suspect because Frontier programmed the game to spawn a bunch of NPC ships eager to dock with those carriers when a mini-instance is created. You can be the only player within light years, and still have to wait several minutes for all those NPCs to leave before you can dock.
*facepalm*
Unfortunately it was due to being “friends only.” Player fleet I guess? I just couldn’t figure out how to filter them out before I got there and kept coming across them.
That range one caught me out once but I figured that one out since it tells you to come closer. I’m going to take that tutorial suggestion though. Cheers!
Ah… Yes, it was most likely a fleet carrier, then. Those are owned by players, and not always open to the public.