One other piece of advice I would give is your first flight out fly to an outpost and practice docking there to get use to the controls. An outpost is much easier to dock at - no mail slot, no rotation, no walls, just a floor to land on.
Before i throw this game away......
- Thread starter Mr_Killer01
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Wait... you have like forever minutes to land.. a Sidewinder yet... come on, seriously?
Ok, try this... get thru the mailslot (if Space Station) and hit "X" to kill your speed. Assign forward thrust to "T" and just tap "T" as you head toward your pad.
Assign left thrust to "A" and right thrust to "D", back thrust to "G", upward thrust to "R" and downward thrust to "F".
Maybe practice on Outposts first.
That's really helpful.
As one who uses the Docking Computer at just about every available opportunity, I fully agree with Lightspeed on this one. Learn to dock manually, and there's been plenty of good advice on this, and learn to dock well before you consider using a docking Computer.
it was one of the most frustrating things for me also in the beginning. I bought a docking computer and watched how it landed the ship to learn. Having said that, sometimes when playing in open its hard to land due to lag, i even had the docking computer being unable to land and just jitter on the pad a couple of times.
If you dont have the patience to practice it or you dont find it fun, do some bounty hunting to get a better ship and buy a docking computer!
If you dont have the patience to practice it or you dont find it fun, do some bounty hunting to get a better ship and buy a docking computer!
I land most of my ships manually because it's just faster than the docking computer. But I use a DC on the Beluga because it does a better job than I do.
This. When I fired this game up for the first time, I did the tutorials for 4 (four) days. All of them. I learned how to swim in this environment before jumping into the actual pool.
BTW, docking computer is fine if that's what you like, but as some people have pointed out, you become dependent on it and you fail to learn the skill. Hence Ford's advice above. Now, if you're dragging a beluga into the mail slot, I'd probably go with the DC just because of the tight squeeze, but that's just me.
That's fair enough. I had enough frustrations docking - not so much at the regular coriolis spots but at the dodecs common in high-tech systems - that as soon as I could get a DC I bought one.. although later, I will say I used it less, only when I wasn't in a hurry, because like in ED I could then dock manually faster. Never having experienced the frustration in ED, I've never bought one so never had it to use
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Stick with it, in a few weeks you'll wonder why you even complained or how you found it difficult.
I don't own a joystick any longer, (thinking of getting some HOTAS for E
While I do have a lot of experience from regular flight sims the only thing that really carried over here was being methodical and calm so that I don't slam on the throttle for minor adjustments for example. What with having thrusters mounted all over the ship and autostabilization there is not much similarity with an aircraft in the handling, no risk of stalling out because your airspeed was too low or breaking off your gear because you put the craft down too hard.
I got a little thrown off when the slot started to rotate relative to my Sidewinder when I started out and I likely did bump into it. The first landing I did was adequate - hardly stellar, if you pardon the expression, but I didn't lose any hull as far as I can remember at least. I just simply flew in at a moderate speed, rolled to get the belly in the right direction and did a shallow dive towards the pad and put the ship down without too much of a hassle. I did overextend a little in a few directions but hardly enough to give me the impression that docking was very difficult.
As far as a point of reference goes, I understand what you mean but surely that's just an issue of opening the throttle too much or perhaps accidentally hitting the boost at the wrong time? You drop out rather far away from the station and while maneuvering towards it you should get at least some feeling for how the ship reacts. There's no reason you would fly at high speed towards a pretty small target if you weren't confident in your ability, right?
When I first started driving I took it easy because I knew I had little experience and would likely not be able to recover if something would happen and thus I tried to minimize the risk of something happening in the first place, I took more or less the same approach in here.
I see your point and I did have problems with finding the opening several times before I noticed the arrows on the hologram and tried following them instead of guessing. And while it could be hard to see where the correct pad was at times I think the landing radar is quite intuitive actually. I didn't care much about the timer as in my mind 10 minutes would be plenty to try a few times.
Regarding the controls, it probably helped that I did pay close attention to what the pre-flight checks wanted me to do in addition to being in the habit of checking out what the controls do in the settings before setting off.
Upon reading my previous post again I realise I came across as rather hostile. That was not my intention and I hope you didn't take any offense by it.
No hostility sensed in your post at all
Hopefully the OP can tell the difference between someone pointing them towards a feature Frontier put into the game that will aide and address precisely the issues the OP pointed out in his original post vs someone trying to shove their well known Anti-DC agenda down their throat whether it actually helps the OP or not.
I'm basically done having this stupid debate with you. As I said, I will trust in the OP and other new players to sort out who is actually trying to help them, and who is just using this thread as another opportunity to push an agenda that is beyond tone deaf to the immediate issues new players are facing.
There is no agenda here .... just trying to help the OP and others. There is no point getting heated about this, it's not a competition.
Never had the timer run out for me, and I'm terrible at flying in this game.
At first what I usually did wrong was either my front was tilted to much to the ground, or my back.
That and forgetting to deploy landing gear
Just play the tutorial a couple times, after a few tries it gets much easier, and I don't even have a joystick, I use a keyboard and mouse to fly.
At first what I usually did wrong was either my front was tilted to much to the ground, or my back.
That and forgetting to deploy landing gear
Just play the tutorial a couple times, after a few tries it gets much easier, and I don't even have a joystick, I use a keyboard and mouse to fly.
For me, landing is pretty much the easiest thing there is to do. VR helps, as does years of HOTAS experience and years of playing flight sim games. I even land my Cutter manually.
I'm always baffled when people say that landing is difficult. I've sat and watched newbs in Sidewinders crash and explode on landing. I mean, really?
A lot of people get hung up on pad orientation, but to me, it was always obvious as to which way I should be pointing when coming in to dock. I think the only time I ever got turned around was on an outpost, and as soon as I saw the hologram, I turned around and landed with no issue. I usually laugh when I see people trying over and over and over and over to dock backwards. Sometimes I try to offer tips, but they're usually so new that they don't know how to use the comms window. I've actually seen at least one person log out of frustration.
Am I the only one who finds this game amazingly intuitive? It all seems perfectly logical to me.
I'm always baffled when people say that landing is difficult. I've sat and watched newbs in Sidewinders crash and explode on landing. I mean, really?
A lot of people get hung up on pad orientation, but to me, it was always obvious as to which way I should be pointing when coming in to dock. I think the only time I ever got turned around was on an outpost, and as soon as I saw the hologram, I turned around and landed with no issue. I usually laugh when I see people trying over and over and over and over to dock backwards. Sometimes I try to offer tips, but they're usually so new that they don't know how to use the comms window. I've actually seen at least one person log out of frustration.
Am I the only one who finds this game amazingly intuitive? It all seems perfectly logical to me.
Ha - just trodden on your rattle. Bye...
What I've found is that the data and functions I intuit in Elite (docking, the superweird relativity going on with the new rotating station holos and where you and they actually are, the 5-seconds-no-lower "timer" for targeted supercruise approaches, for examples) are not always intuited by everyone because people.
Never had issues docking here myself (except with outside help from funtime smokes >___> ), but I've also been pressing lots of buttons and shaking sticks to move pretend vehicles since the C64 days. Truth be told though, I sucked at 84 Elite docking so badly I could barely play that game. Much better with oldschool planes. Space didn't git gud for me till the X-Wing series on PCs.
Give it some practice and you`ll be like the rest of us that can speed dock the annie,corvette or cutter. It becomes automatic after a short time and you`ll wonder what the fuss was about.
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If you're playing on PC with a Mouse and Keyboard, my first tip is to change mouse controls to be Yaw instead of Roll, and rebind roll to A and D.
The video Fost posted was the one that I was also going to post. That's our Producer, Adam Woods, talking you through the docking procedure. It's something that I sometimes have issues with when I switch ships and forget how to use it, and sometimes just when I'm not paying attention. Once you get used to it, and start to remember the procedure, you'll be a pro in no time.
This 100%
I sucked so hard at landing. The tutorial didnt really help.
But I jumped in an eagle and suddenly it became a lot easier and the whole thing clicked
Why not give the game to someone - at least they might bother to learn how to do things without having a hissy fit.
In my case, I think it can help to have experience in other types of 'flying' sims. For example, I have flown real planes and helicopters, and logged thousands of hours flying high fidelity flight sims.
So yea, landing and flying in ED is pretty intuitive to me as well. Once I became familiar with the key mappings as to what controls what, I had no major issues. I did fumble around a couple of times attempting to land backwards at outposts, until I saw the arrows on the thrust deflector panels.
As for the rest of the game being intuitive? Hardly. If it were, there would not exist 3rd party websites, vids (none of which I've watched), and other props just to figure out how to accomplish something in this game. My discovering the forums here was probably the single biggest thing that kept me from throwing this game in the trash about a month after I received it as a gift at Christmas.
And before someone brags about the steep the learning curve and what an acomplishment it is to master, yadda, yadda, yadda... I managed to become an expert at flying and mastering the various weapons delivery systems in Falcon 4.0. The F-16 simulator who's manual came in a 3-ring binder and is inches thick. Anyone remember that one?
I don't get this place sometimes:
"I need help, I have a hard time landing on a pad"
responses:
1. Get better at it (stroke of genius there)
2. Get a docking computer (for a ship that has no slots)
3. Keep trying (as if the OP asked for a pep talk)
4. Docking is easy (world of support there)
5. Some people actually offering help (yay humanity)
"I need help, I have a hard time landing on a pad"
responses:
1. Get better at it (stroke of genius there)
2. Get a docking computer (for a ship that has no slots)
3. Keep trying (as if the OP asked for a pep talk)
4. Docking is easy (world of support there)
5. Some people actually offering help (yay humanity)
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