How the hell do you fly your ship down to a planet surface to specific coordinates?

insanephoton

insanephoton
Believe it or not, it used to be even worse. Back when people were meeting Bomba down on Wilson we only got the compass and Lat/Long in 'normal' flight
 

popuptoaster

P
Bob Lighthouse said:
People need to learn how to read a map again.
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No, they don't, the ship can plot a route hundreds of light years across unknown space but it can't find a location on a planet from programmed in coordinates? I understand there are systems in game that make little sense for the sake of gameplay but manually finding a landing site in this way adds nothing except taking up extra time, it needs no skill, its not a challenge, its just pointlessly slow.

Ian Phillips said:
Which rely on satellites..... show me the in-game satellites orbiting the body you are trying to land on.....
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Not all of them use the global positioning system exclusively, you can buy gear that uses dead reckoning and inertial compasses and on top of that fact YOU show me the satellites the ships in Elite are using to determine the coordinates on brand new planets you only just discovered. You don't need sat nav if the ship already knows where 0 degrees is, you just tell it where you want it to go and it could show you using the compass
 
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Bob Lighthouse

Banned
Bob Lighthouse
popuptoaster said:
No, they don't,
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If people don't understand compass headings and lat/lon, then yes, they do.

It is as easy as flying at a heading of 90 OR 270 degrees, no it doesn't matter where you are on on the planet.
Then, when the longitude number is about there, turn either 90 deg right or left to 0 or 180 and head that way until the lat number is on, then descend.
Done.
 

popuptoaster

P
Bob Lighthouse said:
If people don't understand compass headings and lat/lon, then yes, they do.

It is as easy as flying at a heading of 90 OR 270 degrees, no it doesn't matter where you are on on the planet.
Then, when the longitude number is about there, turn either 90 deg right or left to 0 or 180 and head that way until the lat number is on, then descend.
Done.
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You are not reading what people are writing, very few people are saying they CAN'T do it, it's not difficult to watch numbers go up and down even if you have no idea what you are doing, the point people are making is that it is boring, time consuming, pretty pointless as it adds nothing to gameplay and makes no sense given the ships ability to know where north is anyway.

If you are exploring and hunting around at random you don't need to the coordinates system other than to keep yourself on a specific heading if that's what you want to do or to make a note of some feature or other to pass on to other players.

If you are going to a specific location that has been indicated to you by someone feeding you coordinates then why can you not feed those in to the navigation system when you plot a route in the same way that you select ground based installations on the planet? The ship must have the coordinates of those installations and be locking them in to its nav system itself

If you can do one you should be able to do the other, circling round a planet watching numbers go up and down is not fun gameplay.
 
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Bob Lighthouse

Banned
Bob Lighthouse
popuptoaster said:
You are not reading what people are writing, very few people are saying they CAN'T do it, it's not difficult to watch numbers go up and down even if you have no idea what you are doing, the point people are making is that it is boring, time consuming, pretty pointless as it adds nothing to gameplay and makes no sense given the ships ability to know where north is anyway.

If you are exploring and hunting around at random you don't need to the coordinates system other than to keep yourself on a specific heading if that's what you want to do or to make a note of some feature or other to pass on to other players.

If you are going to a specific location that has been indicated to you by someone feeding you coordinates then why can you not feed those in to the navigation system when you plot a route in the same way that you select ground based installations on the planet? The ship must have the coordinates of those installations and be locking them in to its nav system itself

If you can do one you should be able to do the other, circling round a planet watching numbers go up and down is not fun gameplay.
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I'm reading it all, but I'm just dismissing it.
I think it's also inconsistent to complain about a lack of GPS but not about not getting flattened by the rapid acceleration to x000c, but hey, I'm a pedant.
It's a game.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Must say, I don't really have a problem with the ship's computer being able to allocate coordinates to a planet.

Presumably, it's clever enough to either detect a magnetic field around a planet, or simply detect it's rotation, and use that information to apply coordinates.

Let's face it, our ship's computers are clever enough to instantly detect every body in a system and then predict all their orbits from whatever data the scanner provides so if it can do that we probably shouldn't be too surprised that it's capable of figuring out where the poles of a planet are and then applying coordinates.
 

Arkadi

Arkadi
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https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDange...isual_quick_reference_for_navigating_planets/
 

Bob Lighthouse

Banned
Bob Lighthouse
Stealthie said:
Must say, I don't really have a problem with the ship's computer being able to allocate coordinates to a planet.

Presumably, it's clever enough to either detect a magnetic field around a planet, or simply detect it's rotation, and use that information to apply coordinates.

Let's face it, our ship's computers are clever enough to instantly detect every body in a system and then predict all their orbits from whatever data the scanner provides so if it can do that we probably shouldn't be too surprised that it's capable of figuring out where the poles of a planet are and then applying coordinates.
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That would be WAY down my list of priorities of things to work on, that's all.
 

popuptoaster

P
Bob Lighthouse said:
I'm reading it all, but I'm just dismissing it.
I think it's also inconsistent to complain about a lack of GPS but not about not getting flattened by the rapid acceleration to x000c, but hey, I'm a pedant.
It's a game.
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That just shows your lack of comprehension I'm not complaining about a lack of GPS there is no reason to have GPS on any unsettled world, once again I'll try and explain it to you.

You can select a planetary settlement from your map and the ship will navigate you to it.

The ship must get the coordinates to that settlement from the map info held in the database in order to direct you to the correct spot on the planet.

Therefore the ship CAN indicate directions to you via the planetary coordinates it has access to.

Why can you simply not input any coordinates you desire at the map screen and have the ship direct you to them in exactly the same way it would do had it got those numbers from the database instead or a manual input?

Having to manually fly round a planet watching numbers is not exciting, not fun, does not require skill, is not competitive and does not teach you anything, it is not good "gameplay" it is a chore and an artificially induced one at that.

There are a thousand inconstancies in this game, they are usually there for the benefit of making the game more fun, this one does not add fun so comparing it to the inertia problems of high speed travel is a failed argument and no justification for this particular mechanic.
 
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