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Newcomer / Intro What are you up to?
- Thread starter Tyres O'Flaherty
- Start date
I was literally in the game ready to make a quick example vid but the audio died and I got distracted fixing PC problems instead. You won't have this problem for long though. It's just a newbie thing.
Eventually I figure I'll get the timing down. Initially I was messing up 10/10 times. But now I can occasionally get it right. Not often, but occasionally. Now that I know how to land, that's easy. I prefer auto-dock and auto-launch, but that's for convenience rather then not being able to do it. I can get something to drink or eat a sandwich rather then focusing on maneuvering the ship while docking. Even once I master manual supercruise timing I'll probably still use Assist when I can, if for no other reason then to have a chance to give my hands a bit of a rest. Still makes planetary base approaches too long right now for my comfort.
Yeah, I still prefer supercruise assist. Sometimes I'll get back to the computer and realise I've flown zillions of miles past a station or planet otherwise.
How long is too long??The universe is infinite.
When I'm looking at the Time to Destination countdown, and it says "One hour fifteen minutes", that is too long to be flying with a valuable cargo down to the planet's surface.
I really hope you're trolling us.
it's shorter than the Hutton run.
What's that?
Yes but they will only fire if the target is within their arcs of fire and within affective range and not obscured by rocks or friendly ships.
There is an outpost called Hutton Orbital that orbits a planet around Proxima Centauri which orbits Alpha Centauri which is where you jump into the system. Proxima is just under a quarter of a light year from Alpha and can only be reached after a cruise which takes a minimum of 90 minutes real time, it is not unknown for small tanked ships to run out of fuel before they arrive.
Nope, not trolling you. I did mention I am bad at timing when to exit supercruise. At one point when approaching a station in the starter area that's near an asteroid field I literally took 2 hours to get to the station. Couldn't re-enter supercruise due to Mass Lock from the asteroids.
Oh yeah. I'm pretty certain I've made that run before. My home base is around the area and usually I don't check the travel time before accepting the mission. Old Duck warned me about this a while back but I ignored his advice.
Wow.
There are Fleet Carriers at Hutton Orbital. Catch a free ride to get your mug......An FC can jump directly there.....?? Do the run to make your paint work look cool...
When doing a manual supercruise, what often happens is I initially drop down to normal space at 400 km or so. After that I reengage supercruise while keeping my speed down pretty low so I can drop back out at moments notice. I drop out of supercruise again when I think I'm almost there, and continue using sublight engines. At this point the travel time is usually around 15 minutes due to me misjudging momentum, meaning around 150 km. I could try to get closer then that, but I'm afraid I'll overshoot when I reengage supercruise. A few times I've managed to time things perfectly, to the point where I initially drop out of supercruise only 10 km from my destination. But that was more blind luck then skill.
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On planetary approach, you don't exit SC manually.
On a station approach, the failsafe method is to throttle down to 75% while your ETA is still above 5 seconds. If you wait until 5 seconds or less, you will need to spiral or loop - a little more effort, but also effectively faster. There are a few approaches where this recipe fails because you are slowed down from the gravity of a close by body and exceed the safe speed while coming out of the gravity well on the approach.
Once you reach safe speed and distance (see the indicators left of your radar) , you'll get a blue pop-up prompting you to exit SC. No manual timing required.
On approaching a planet, I found the safe speed to usually be around 50%. You'll also have the safe speed band indicated on the display left of the radar. When you're in orbit, cruise towards your target unless it's at 45 degrees below you, then turn down. Your speed will reduce gradually to 2.5 km/s, then you'll automatically drop from orbital cruise into glide and the drop out of glide around 5 km from the surface.
On a station approach, the failsafe method is to throttle down to 75% while your ETA is still above 5 seconds. If you wait until 5 seconds or less, you will need to spiral or loop - a little more effort, but also effectively faster. There are a few approaches where this recipe fails because you are slowed down from the gravity of a close by body and exceed the safe speed while coming out of the gravity well on the approach.
Once you reach safe speed and distance (see the indicators left of your radar) , you'll get a blue pop-up prompting you to exit SC. No manual timing required.
On approaching a planet, I found the safe speed to usually be around 50%. You'll also have the safe speed band indicated on the display left of the radar. When you're in orbit, cruise towards your target unless it's at 45 degrees below you, then turn down. Your speed will reduce gradually to 2.5 km/s, then you'll automatically drop from orbital cruise into glide and the drop out of glide around 5 km from the surface.
I am also quite bad at this. @AS in had given you some good advice. But when it mess up badly I usually head straight up until I loose mass lock, go back into supercruise and try again.
![[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/234/234580.jpg?1612617334){kind=avatar}
Ok, so what I tend to do is, I aim to get into the final glide at around 100km out. The glide takes up around 60-70km. In most cases, where you are landing on a planet that has a base, they are Low-G planets, meaning that even a little overshoot is easily dealt with. keep the the throttle as low as you can just before going into the glide, when you come out of the glide you will hardly be travelling at all. I don't come straight down on the target either, I always line up the target as though I was a plane coming into land, rather than a helicopter.
Despite me giving you the numbers of 100km and 60-70km, I rarely come out of glide over 20km from the target. I'm nearly always between 7-10km, sometimes as low as 4km. Maybe I'm taking my eye off the clock at these points, but the 100km out mark is my indicator to move in.
The other thing to try is aiming to overshoot the target, I don't know the technical term but there is a centre point on the 2 lines in the centre of the screen:
Not my picture but you can see that I have drawn 2 crude black lines on the outside of the ones I mean.
In this photo, they are just under shooting it. you can try over shooting it. BTW, this is almost the perfect angle I was talking about when I enter the glide. Look like that at around 100km out, you should have no problems.
Hope this helps, if not, later today I will make a vid.