Drag?

Kosmetas · Mar 8, 2015

Why does my ship slow down when I lower the landing gear?

Armour · Mar 8, 2015

Safety, so you don't hurtle into a docking bay at "pancake" speeds.

Narius Cen · Mar 8, 2015

The ship goes into landing mode. Not much drag in space! You can lower your landing gear at any speed without risking damage, too

Jukelo · Mar 8, 2015

Well, the flight model is what it is, don't expect much in the way of realism, gameplay reasons had to take the priority.
Make use of it, it's quite useful as an emergency brake inside stations or dusing combat.

Ancipital · Mar 8, 2015

It's not drag, I think it's part of the game enforcing a bigger safety margin. It also locks out boosting too, for a similar reason.

PixelFerret · Mar 8, 2015

As people stated above, your ships computer goes into "landing mode" (reason why there's a completely seperate control scheme for this) which limits your ships thruster outputs for safe and more precise maneuvering...
at least that's my understanding.

Yabba Addict · Mar 8, 2015

Yeah, it's landing mode, you can even disable it in the control options.

ringor · Mar 9, 2015

Jukelo said:
Make use of it, it's quite useful as an emergency brake inside stations or dusing combat.

Are you sure of that?

Just tested in my Viper. From full speed to zero: 2km with or without landing gear deployed.
Do I have to do something special besides throttling down and deploying my landing gear?

Zplintz · Mar 9, 2015

Fa on. Go full speed and then put your landing gear down. You will see the speed drop. Keep your throttle up as that determines the amount if thrust applied.

ringor · Mar 9, 2015

Yes, deploying your landing gear limits your max speed.

But the way I see it, it doesn't help you reduce your speed faster than by simply throttling down.
So you can't use it as a form of emergency brake - or I use it wrong.

Iskariot · Mar 9, 2015

Kosmetas said:
Why does my ship slow down when I lower the landing gear?

As others have said it is not drag, but the way your ship's flight mechanics are programmed to react. The big plus of this is that also your boost is disabled.
In the early days many commanders have pressed a wrong button inside a station and splattered themselves against a wall. If you lower your gear in time this won't happen anymore.

galenhammond · Mar 9, 2015

ringor said:
Yes, deploying your landing gear limits your max speed.

But the way I see it, it doesn't help you reduce your speed faster than by simply throttling down.
So you can't use it as a form of emergency brake - or I use it wrong.

Ship slows down when deploying landing gear as ship's computer automatically lowers the max thrust available to avoid "pancake" mode in stations as another poster mentioned.
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However, I do not use Landing Gear as an emergency brake. I have a T.Flight Thrustmaster X HOTAS, and I have mapped the throttle to the "forward only" option which requires using a button to toggle the forward and reverse thrusts. So when I am speeding into a station at 50% fwd thrust, I can brake by either throttling back (which takes awhile), OR I can press the toggle forward button which effectively throws my reverse thruster on at the same exact thrust level as I had going forward, thus bringing me to a stop quicker than by just throttling back and relying on Flight Assist to brake me appropriately. I have discovered that option 2 is much more effective

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[EDIT] As addendum to my last point.....the throttle forward toggle button is more effective assuming you have not also mapped the engine boost to a button that is close enough to be accidentally pressed. I learned that lesson the hard way last night (and wrote a post about it entitled "Kill Your Speed, Not Your Credit Balance......").

Darth Sidious · Mar 9, 2015

ive combined the landinggear with engines off and have my thrusters set on pov done with voice attack because im layzy

ringor · Mar 9, 2015

galenhammond said:
So when I am speeding into a station at 50% fwd thrust, I can brake by either throttling back (which takes awhile), OR I can press the toggle forward button which effectively throws my reverse thruster on at the same exact thrust level as I had going forward, thus bringing me to a stop quicker than by just throttling back and relying on Flight Assist to brake me appropriately. I have discovered that option 2 is much more effective

Strange. Last time I measured that with my Viper (reducing throttle to zero vs. reversing thrusters to -100%) I got the exakt same results for both methods. For me it looked as though flight assist already uses maximum reverse thrust to brake.

With flight assist off and reverse thrust on the other hand I was able to brake faster.
Quite illogically so, I might add. :S

Sadly I'm not a good enough pilot yet to use the FA-Off emergency brake in the heat of battle.