Add docking-related geometry information for stations and structures to SDE / ESI

[DWand]

Feature Request

It would be nice if SDE and / or ESI provided more docking-related geometry information for dockable stations and structure. That includes such information as:

• Object orientation / rotation in Space
• Docking area radius / size
• A list of docks an object has with information about each of them:
  • Ship types that are allowed to use this dock
  • Location of the dock
  • Orientation / rotation of the dock
  • Maximum angle at which a ship can undock using this dock
  • Undocking velocity
  • Distance from the dock to the edge of the docking area

Maybe, there are some other factors that may influence docking and undocking from stations and structures.

Use case

This information may be useful for several use cases:

• Checking relative safety of docking to a station. For example, it may be dangerous for haulers to dock to a "kickout" station in a hostile environment. There is already some player-measured information on undock runway length for some of the station types available online (for example, https://jambeeno.com/sta) and it can be measured / verified using bookmarks, but it is fairly time consuming and may require a lot of docking and undocking cycles.

• Creating and checking docking and undocking bookmarks. There is a lot of information online describing different methods of creating bookmarks for safer docking and undocking. Having more information about station geometry and docking / undocking rules may be useful to plan and verify placement of such bookmarks.

• Verifying correctness of information that is available online. EVE Online has a lot of history and game mechanics may change over time. Therefore, it may be hard to verify whether an article or a video that were created many years ago is still relevant or not. Here are some examples:

  • Patch Notes for Trinity 1.1: Boost Patch from 2008 mention that ships undock at maximum velocity and 0-15 angle in relation to the undock point. Is it still true after 17 years? Do all station types and dock sizes have the same undocking policies and regulations?
  • https://jambeeno.com/sta provides information about player-measured undock runway lengths for some stations, but verifying it would require player's physical presence at a station of this type. However, this kind of information seems like technical specification of a car one would Google these days.
  • EVE University Wiki describes Station Geometry based on SDE data that was publicly available since 2010 (at least) till 2021-01-27 (the last SDE that contained staStationTypes.yaml file according to EVE Ref's static data export archive)
  • Fuzzwork SDE conversion tool still provides a CSV and SQL versions of the old staStationTypes file, although it is hard to tell whether this information is still relevant or not.

Authentication

To me it seems like public and mostly static information.

Example return

I'm not sure what part of this feature request is related to SDE and what part to ESI, but, maybe, something like this would work:

[
  {
    ... existing station info,
    "position": {
      "x": ...,
      "y": ...,
      "z": ...
    },
    "orientation": {
      "x": ...,
      "y": ...,
      "z": ...
    },
    "dockingAreaRadius": ...,
    "docks": [
      {
        "location": {
          "x": ...,
          "y": ...,
          "z": ...
        },
        "orientation": {
          "x": ...,
          "y": ...,
          "z": ...
        },
        "allowedShipTypes": [
          ...
        ],
        "undockRunwayLength": ...,
        "undockAngleRange": ...,
        "undockVelocity": ...
      }
    ]
  },
  ...99 other stations / structures
]

Checklist

Check all boxes that apply to this issue:

• Feature request description is provided
• Use case exists
• Feature requires a new route
• Feature adds data to existing route
• Feature requires new auth scope
• Feature can reuse existing scope
• Feature does not require auth
• Meta feature, applies to all routes