Landing Pad Lights - Quit Hiding Them

DarQik

DarQik
Most of my docking frustrations are caused by getting in/out, and not being able to find the right pad when several of them are active or I'm assigned the one right next to the entry.

Docking is a very Spartan experience. While I enjoy the challenge, it does make sense to do some basic things to avoid common accidents within a space station like penalizing pilots who loiter in the entry, drift into the wrong pad or


1. Keep the landing pad lights on.

Why do they turn off when I get close? They would make an excellent guide to actually landing properly.

Please leave the guide box on until the entering ship is down (or exiting ship is up) indicating it is an active pad. When I see the pad next to mine light up, I know to be careful as another ship may be coming in/out next to me.

Yes, it wrecks the pretty view of the facility as you go through it. If not the solid frames, please leave the bars on.


2. Tag the assigned pad. Suggestions: targeting icon or vertical spike in the center

If the lighting is done in the ship's HUD rather than by the station, it makes sense to tag the one I'm supposed to use a bit differently. Use an alternate color, add a target icon, or a vertical spike from the pad's center.

When entering a station, it's inappropriate to stop in the entry to look around. This is bad for traffic flow into a station. (Maybe the Occulus Rift will solve this for me in 2015.)


These are probably not new ideas, much like the many that NPCs follow shipping lane protocols and don't travel down the middle--one side in and one side out as indicated by the colored lights. I'd be happy to see extended landing pad lights as an option like the orbit lines.
 

Rhonda

Rhonda
Yes, please. I don't understand who thought it's a good idea to turn off landingpad lights/numbers just the moment one enters the station. Irl I would bark at the harbour master via CB, if he turns off the lighthouse while I approach the port.
 

GerminVermin

GerminVermin
DarQik said:
Most of my docking frustrations are caused by getting in/out, and not being able to find the right pad when several of them are active or I'm assigned the one right next to the entry.
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I'll stop you there.

Your compass points directly to your landing pad.

Learn to use your instruments.
 

SirGirard

SirGirard
GerminVermin said:
I'll stop you there.

Your compass points directly to your landing pad.

Learn to use your instruments.
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Well I guess we should tell that to all pilots landing at major airports today! Learn to use your instruments...."You can't expect to have landing lights at a major Airport...That's spoon feeding?"
 

Cathy

Cathy
Seriously though it wouldn't hurt to show your assigned pad in a different colour. Mentioned this long ago.
 

GerminVermin

GerminVermin
SirGirard said:
Well I guess we should tell that to all pilots landing at major airports today! Learn to use your instruments...."You can't expect to have landing lights at a major Airport...That's spoon feeding?"
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It's a video game not real life where hundreds of lives are at stake. Stop sucking.
 

flint read

flint read
they used to stay on till you were down last night mine winked out at an out post and made it very hard to spot the pad not only that but while they were out the landing guide would not show so i had to do a completely manual landing and it worked, so i suspect that this is a bug that needs fixing and not working as intended at the moment.
 

GerminVermin

GerminVermin
In my experience, the landing lights around the pad are lit properly 95% of the time. It's only very rarely that I am landing on a pad that is not lit. In those situations, the compass points to my pad anyway so it's no big deal. The people screaming that the pads are never lit or hardly ever lit are sensationally exaggerating.
 

Rarz

R
It's annoying enough for the larger stations where you can have the pad right below you as you enter -- and if the lights are bugging out, you end up overshooting it and having to turn back. With outposts it's a complete pain in the ass as you approach those from a random direction, leaving you to figure out where the pad is, even if it is lightened up. We're living a 3300. A holographic arrow on my display should come standard on all ships. :)

I'm not complaining about landing, that's easy (i can hurtle my T6 through a station entrance at full throttle, no problem). But finding the damn pad is a pain at times.
 

GerminVermin

GerminVermin
Rarz said:
It's annoying enough for the larger stations where you can have the pad right below you as you enter -- and if the lights are bugging out, you end up overshooting it and having to turn back. With outposts it's a complete pain in the ass as you approach those from a random direction, leaving you to figure out where the pad is, even if it is lightened up. We're living a 3300. A holographic arrow on my display should come standard on all ships. :)

I'm not complaining about landing, that's easy (i can hurtle my T6 through a station entrance at full throttle, no problem). But finding the damn pad is a pain at times.
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If you're overshooting your pad, then you're not using your compass to identify which pad is yours. The pad is always marked on your compass. This is WHY it's marked on your compass. The fault is on you, not the station or the game.

Lestat said:
Well Until they fix the bug. Best idea is use the compass.
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What bug? It's not a bug just because you say it's a bug.
 

Kramster

Kramster
It almost certainly a bug or maybe a server comms issues
I have been playing since September and this flickering only started just before launch before then it was fine, stable and lit
I would find it very hard to believe that someone would purposefully design the landing pad lights to switch on/off at random
 

DarQik

DarQik
GerminVermin said:
If you're overshooting your pad, then you're not using your compass to identify which pad is yours. The pad is always marked on your compass. This is WHY it's marked on your compass. The fault is on you, not the station or the game.
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I wondered about that, but how do I trust it? ILS is really hard to trust over visual nav at first. It would help to be clearly documented and properly referenced by other instrumentation. (Documentation is hard for this game given its scope--both to generate and to read.)

So, if my compass points to the assigned landing pad, why is the station still my selected target instead of the landing pad? The compass consistently points to the targeted destination, except when docking. Here it breaks the rule.

If the compass is set to something new either update the target panel ("Station [___] - Pad 16") or override the compass outline color to match the docking pop-up to indicate the change of function.

I look forward to lights staying on. They're on most of the time until you get close, and then you follow the tower visually. I pulled into a station once today and lined up over the first line of pads and poof! My target pad somewhere toward the back clicked off. I managed not to get killed for loitering as I tried other pads in the straight line to figure out where I was supposed to go.
 

schuesseled

S
GerminVermin said:
If you're overshooting your pad, then you're not using your compass to identify which pad is yours. The pad is always marked on your compass. This is WHY it's marked on your compass. The fault is on you, not the station or the game.



What bug? It's not a bug just because you say it's a bug.
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Some times the landing pad illumination doesn't come on at all.
 

Pest

Pest
I think it is just a bug that the indicators disappear sometimes when approaching a pad. Maybe due to others/NPCs getting closer to their pad!?
However, it seems intentional to turn them off if you're near. That ought to be on all the time.
And the "guidance" system could be improved as there is a flaw in the height display (if >9 metres) as well as it should extend further above.
The pad-# on the pad-tower would be realistic, too.

On outposts, the pads would never ever been placed in the way that you'll find it in ED. Meaning facing in the way that you have to fly over the center of the station to face outside again. For simple safety reasons real station would always have the approach from the outside towards the inside and so would be the launching away from the station, too.... Ok, here you can bump angainst anything and it is still called a "successful docking" :-D


BTW: A bit more random distribution of placed cargo around the pads would be nice, too. It looks random the first time. But, to see it over and over again looks rather odd.
 

DarQik

DarQik
Kramster said:
True but the point is you don't actually need them to land, at least at the big stations
I posted this earlier, it's worth a watch from around 3:20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weAoY7kw2NM
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No, you don't need them, you could look for the tiny numbers and find your spot too. At least their not that cruel to us.

Ok, the compass helps sort of. It's one dimensional (arguably 2D). I need to navigate in 3 dimensions. I need at least second compass. I'm lined up with the compass as demonstrated in the video, but still off by so much I totally miss the pad. If the landing thing appeared early and showed me way off base rather than wait until the last moment to appear. That plus the compass would work.

The instrumentation must work for it to be useful. This compass only gives some orientation--visual alignment is still required. Which is hard when you can't see down. Meaning I am going to have to approach inverted and then roll to land.


Pest, I especially like the outpost station approaches that have you narrowly avoiding clearly important station structures. We have facilities built that way today due to botched architectural planning; the delivery trucks have a great time with it. I guess poor corporate engineering happens in the future too.
 
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