Riddle me this . . .

[IndigoWyrd]

It actually can, you just don’t know how to do it, but I’m in a generous mood, so I’ll tell you how:

Pick a planetary installation.
Land your ship somewhere nearby.
Board your SVR.
Dismiss your ship.
Drive into said installation.
Request Boarding from said Installation.
Watch your ship fly itself to a prepared landing pad on said installation.
Drive into the small garage at said pad.
Board your ship.

Send cash to me in thanks and praise. Some rep will do if you’re broke or cheap

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Some rep will do if you’re broke or cheap

I'm both.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

It actually can, you just don’t know how to do it, but I’m in a generous mood, so I’ll tell you how:

Pick a planetary installation.
Land your ship somewhere nearby.
Board your SVR.
Dismiss your ship.
Drive into said installation.
Request Boarding from said Installation.
Watch your ship fly itself to a prepared landing pad on said installation.
Drive into the small garage at said pad.
Board your ship.

Send cash to me in thanks and praise. Some rep will do if you’re broke or cheap

Sadly we already tried bringing the SRV to the station and it didn't quite work inside... SRV phased into another dimension and totally ignored the buildings. So this genius solution is sadly not applicable to stations and outposts.

PS: take that, you DC antagonists!

 

[Alec Turner]

Unlike the landing of an unmanned ship, having a computer automatically land one with the pilot still on board carries a small but very real risk of death to the occupant. In order to get around various galactic insurance policy issues the Pilot's Federation decided several centuries ago that the best way to tackle this problem was to make the fitting of a docking computer be something that had to be done entirely at the owners discretion. If you read the small print of your docking computer owners manual you'll see there's a small sub-clause buried in paragraph 37 which basically says you use the computer entirely at your own risk and that no insurance company shall be held liable for any loss of life.

 

[777Driver]

We play this game to fly ships, but people want to take away part of the flying.

Let's not go down that rabbit hole. You know full well that many of us who are pro automation and docking computers, are also very competent pilots in both FA-ON & OFF. I enjoy the flight model a great deal, I also enjoy making use of all the ships capabilities.

 

[Han Zulu]

Let's not go down that rabbit hole. You know full well that many of us who are pro automation and docking computers, are also very competent pilots in both FA-ON & OFF. I enjoy the flight model a great deal, I also enjoy making use of all the ships capabilities.

And sometimes it's just nice to be able to be a little lazy.

 

[777Driver]

And sometimes it's just nice to be able to be a little lazy.

Definitely, I enjoy manually launching from planets, but I have a voice attack script that launches, retracts the gear, pitches up 90 degrees and jumps to super cruise. Sometimes I enjoy kicking back and letting the machine do the work.

 

[Han Zulu]

Definitely, I enjoy manually launching from planets, but I have a voice attack script that launches, retracts the gear, pitches up 90 degrees and jumps to super cruise. Sometimes I enjoy kicking back and letting the machine do the work.

And when I've been out in deep space for too long (like weeks and months) and come back to dock the Anaconda... well, it's a bit shaky. It'd nice to just let it do it for me before I get used to it again.

 

[CMDR Yates]

Nostalgia for 1984.

Elite's docking computer was a separate module you had to buy, and that made some sense then. In '84, you didn't have planetary landings with autopilot departures, everything in your ship was done manually, and computers in the real world were bulky and expensive.

If you need a justification for it now... maybe it's a special belt-and-braces insurance system required by law to autopilot in high traffic areas. Or something.

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Sadly we already tried bringing the SRV to the station and it didn't quite work inside... SRV phased into another dimension and totally ignored the buildings. So this genius solution is sadly not applicable to stations and outposts.

PS: take that, you DC antagonists!

Which is why I specifically mentioned planetary installation, not stations or outposts. SRV’s don’t belong there.

 

[stereoBear]

Why is there suddenly a bunch of threads complaining that the docking computer is seperate and not on every ship this month? We play this game to fly ships, but people want to take away part of the flying.

There are a few people on these forums that desperately need to open at least one thread every day for some reason; in their desperate search for topics sometimes two of them dig up the same dead horse ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Jereaca]

You do need a module for your ship to auto (or even manually) land on planet surfaces: it's the Planetary Approach Suite, and it comes pre-installed on all ships. Take it off and you can't land on planets anymore.

Module required for auto landings either way -- seems consistent to me.

Just to play devils advocate on this, why then can we not select an area on the surface and have it auto land us near it?

 

[biot]

The ideal answer would be to incorporate the planetary landing suite with the docking computer.

That would certainly make recalling your ship a lot more interesting if it didn't have it installed.

Recalling ship ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... New crater detected

 

[Oopsie Daisy]

This game takes place in an alternate, parallel universe where engineers are idiots.

 

[Marklar_]

This game takes place in an alternate, parallel universe where engineers are idiots.

And sadists.

 

[Krash]

Since the legitimacy of my pilot's licence forbids me from buying and installing one of these blasphemous gizmos in my ship, it would be cool if FDEV flipped the switch and just gave everyone the option (right next to the wing beacon setting). It would be cool to sit back and watch the DC at work at least once.

 

[disorganise]

It's the encryption.
Station traffic control is heavily encrypted to avoid the the possibility that some hacker would take control of all the ships and cause havoc and devastation.
The docking computer contains the necessary processing power to decrypt the channel and establish the two way comma. That's just not needed when trying to land on some remote body.

 

[zipline]

Why does every ship in the game have a computer that is capable of finding a safe location on a random, planetary surface near the SRV and then landing the ship there but still apparently needs a separate docking computer to find and land on prepared landing pads that are consistently placed at every space-station, outpost and planetary settlement?

I don't know, but an extra slot would be nice, I would carry a fuel limpet controller so I could drop into a few of those distress call USSs and help the odd stranded npc out ... after all fdev must have put some effort into setting those up, pity many of us cmdrs can't spare needed extra slot.

 

[Gortron]

Why does every ship in the game have a computer that is capable of finding a safe location on a random, planetary surface near the SRV and then landing the ship there but still apparently needs a separate docking computer to find and land on prepared landing pads that are consistently placed at every space-station, outpost and planetary settlement?

Riddle me this.. why are we the only known sentient type of life form in the universe that we know of and people worry about how crap we are at programming?

 

[Arry]

Why does every ship in the game have a computer that is capable of finding a safe location on a random, planetary surface near the SRV and then landing the ship there but still apparently needs a separate docking computer to find and land on prepared landing pads that are consistently placed at every space-station, outpost and planetary settlement?

There is too much electronic background for the ships OWN auto-pilot, to deal with and so you have the buy a tuned one for the landing pad systems.