When taking on a mission is their a particular icon when plotting on the system map to distinguish between "planet surface" stations vs "in space" stations? Had alot of trouble on my last landing which I did accomplish but was very tedious. Want the heads up before commiting to a mission. Will practice though in near future.
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Newcomer / Intro Surface Ports or stations
- Thread starter timedriver
- Start date
I struggled with planetary landings too until i worked out the technique. Easiest way is
1. Approaching orbit at the right speed: Use super cruise assist to get there, but cancel SCA as it starts to move you into orbit (assuming you have planetary apprach suit, if not then you watch the speed indicator to get it in the blue before reaching the atmosphere)
2. Lining up to the target: Without entering the atmos', lock the target destination so its highlighted on the surface, then go around the outside of the atmos' until the destination is roughly infront and below you (use look around mode to help find the target without steering at the surface).
3. Entering the atmosphere: With your target in front of you, and your height from surface and distance from the target being loosely the same, point to the target and let the trajectory take you into the atmosphere. This will give you an approach angle of about 45 degrees.
4. Slowing to glide: Slow down to min speed now youre in the atmosphere (its a capped min in this flight type). At some point (normally about 7km height) you will drop from atmospheric flight and start gliding. Keep pointed at the target which should still be at about 45 degrees to you. Dont pitch over 70 or lower than about 25 else you'll fall from glide. Glide will take you down to about 3 km height and then will auto drop you out at a low speed - you wont hit the surface. You should now be pretty close to the destination, depending how well you steered.
5. Arrival: When you've exited from glide, reduce speed to nothing incase the gravity is high - check it on the hud, and then proceed to dock / land etc
If you lose sight of the target on approach to the atmosphere, dont enter the atmos - pull away and line up again.
If you fail the glide stage and glide stops early, you'll probably be miles away from the destination - pull away, get back into SC and start the approach again.
Planetary landing are tricky to start with but once you learn the different stages as outlined above you'll be doing them pretty easily - The trick is recognising that the flight modes are all very different speeds and that if you mess one stage up, it will be increasingly difficult to recover from as you'll probably be trying to fix it while in a much slower mode later in the process. Its better and faster to just recognise the failure early and start again rather than try to fix a botched attempt
Hope it helps
1. Approaching orbit at the right speed: Use super cruise assist to get there, but cancel SCA as it starts to move you into orbit (assuming you have planetary apprach suit, if not then you watch the speed indicator to get it in the blue before reaching the atmosphere)
2. Lining up to the target: Without entering the atmos', lock the target destination so its highlighted on the surface, then go around the outside of the atmos' until the destination is roughly infront and below you (use look around mode to help find the target without steering at the surface).
3. Entering the atmosphere: With your target in front of you, and your height from surface and distance from the target being loosely the same, point to the target and let the trajectory take you into the atmosphere. This will give you an approach angle of about 45 degrees.
4. Slowing to glide: Slow down to min speed now youre in the atmosphere (its a capped min in this flight type). At some point (normally about 7km height) you will drop from atmospheric flight and start gliding. Keep pointed at the target which should still be at about 45 degrees to you. Dont pitch over 70 or lower than about 25 else you'll fall from glide. Glide will take you down to about 3 km height and then will auto drop you out at a low speed - you wont hit the surface. You should now be pretty close to the destination, depending how well you steered.
5. Arrival: When you've exited from glide, reduce speed to nothing incase the gravity is high - check it on the hud, and then proceed to dock / land etc
If you lose sight of the target on approach to the atmosphere, dont enter the atmos - pull away and line up again.
If you fail the glide stage and glide stops early, you'll probably be miles away from the destination - pull away, get back into SC and start the approach again.
Planetary landing are tricky to start with but once you learn the different stages as outlined above you'll be doing them pretty easily - The trick is recognising that the flight modes are all very different speeds and that if you mess one stage up, it will be increasingly difficult to recover from as you'll probably be trying to fix it while in a much slower mode later in the process. Its better and faster to just recognise the failure early and start again rather than try to fix a botched attempt
Hope it helps
Last edited:
SCA&SC?I struggled with planetary landings too until i worked out the technique. Easiest way is
1. Approaching orbit at the right speed: Use super cruise assist to get there, but cancel SCA as it starts to move you into orbit (assuming you have planetary apprach suit, if not then you watch the speed indicator to get it in the blue before reaching the atmosphere)
2. Lining up to the target: Without entering the atmos', lock the target destination so its highlighted on the surface, then go around the outside of the atmos' until the destination is roughly infront and below you (use look around mode to help find the target without steering at the surface).
3. Entering the atmosphere: With your target in front of you, and your height from surface and distance from the target being loosely the same, point to the target and let the trajectory take you into the atmosphere. This will give you an approach angle of about 45 degrees.
4. Slowing to glide: Slow down to min speed now youre in the atmosphere (its a capped min in this flight type). At some point (normally about 7km height) you will drop from atmospheric flight and start gliding. Keep pointed at the target which should still be at about 45 degrees to you. Dont pitch over 70 or lower than about 25 else you'll fall from glide. Glide will take you down to about 3 km height and then will auto drop you out at a low speed - you wont hit the surface. You should now be pretty close to the destination, depending how well you steered.
5. Arrival: When you've exited from glide, reduce speed to nothing incase the gravity is high - check it on the hud, and then proceed to dock / land etc
If you lose sight of the target on approach to the atmosphere, dont enter the atmos - pull away and line up again.
If you fail the glide stage and glide stops early, you'll probably be miles away from the destination - pull away, get back into SC and start the approach again.
Planetary landing are tricky to start with but once you learn the different stages as outlined above you'll be doing them pretty easily - The trick is recognising that the flight modes are all very different speeds and that if you mess one stage up, it will be increasingly difficult to recover from as you'll probably be trying to fix it while in a much slower mode later in the process. Its better and faster to just recognise the failure early and start again rather than try to fix a botched attempt
Hope it helps
Supercruise Assist (ship module) and Supercruise (low wake, system travel), respectively.
And what about Hubs
Do you mean Outposts?
What are "Hubs"? Except part of station names? Do you have an example?
Otherwise, there are:
large Starports of various types (Coriolis, Ocellus, ...) offering all sizes of landing pads
small Starports = Outposts, offering only small and one medium pad
Megaships, offering usually one large and a number of medium and small pads
Fleet Carriers, offering all pad sizes
and on the ground ports - in Legacy, always offering all pad sizes, in Odyssey with ground bases sometimes offering medium or even small pads only.