Drifting

[sicksuntzu]

Recently bought my Cutter and i really enjoy flying it while still working on finishing the build i want. I have around 32ly and 440 boost with 672 cargo.

The only problem i have with it is the crazy drift when ever i try to dock. I feel like one of those astronauts you see in films who get dislodged from there stations or ships.. just drifting of into space watching the letterbox get smaller and smaller lol. Is there anything i can do to adjust this, currently im using 8D grade 5 DD thrusters, would 8A make that much difference? and is there any flying tricks to help negate the drift?, side thrusters dont seem to work to well.

 

[777Driver]

Stating the obvious, with any heavy ship like the T9/Cutter you have to think way ahead of the ship, especially FA-OFF. Am using pedals for yaw and lateral thrust, often full inputs to manage the drift (can feel like a real workout for the legs after a long session) vertical thrusters on a hat switch - Use all thrusters available to assist with drift.

Speed management also helps considerably, I have a reverse thrust axis on my throttle, I find decelerating into the optimum speed zone helps to tame these beasts during maneuvering, especially in combat or evasive maneuvers. A lot easier to demonstrate with a video, huge amount of fun once you start mastering it

 

[askavir]

You just have to live with it.

The Cutter is a behemoth, think of it like playing a game with huge lag, you have to send input controls before it responds, like piloting it from the future.

With time you'll get use to it and learn how far in advance you have to apply thrust for it to go where you want.

 

[CMDR Harada]

Get your speed down under 125 or so and the drifting really drops off. Not totally, but a lot.
.
Loaded up and decked out, it's a straight up pig. A very profitable pig... I hate flying mine until I dock and check my credit balance.

 

[JetsonRING]

Stuck thruster, maybe?

Recently bought my Cutter and i really enjoy flying it while still working on finishing the build i want. I have around 32ly and 440 boost with 672 cargo.

The only problem i have with it is the crazy drift when ever i try to dock. I feel like one of those astronauts you see in films who get dislodged from there stations or ships.. just drifting of into space watching the letterbox get smaller and smaller lol. Is there anything i can do to adjust this, currently im using 8D grade 5 DD thrusters, would 8A make that much difference? and is there any flying tricks to help negate the drift?, side thrusters don't seem to work to well.

Using a little less than 100% throttle makes a huge difference in handling/turning when using Flight Assist. It's about the INERTIA and DELTA-V (look it up)! Big ships slip and slide through space, especially when changing direction because they are not on a road and do not have wings, just little thrusters trying to shove all that mass around. Get gud at pointing the ship in the direction you want to go and waiting for the direction change to take place. The "space snow" flying by the canopy can give a decent indication of actual direction-of-travel. When I exit super-cruise I aim across the slot and aim for the imaginary straight line into the slot, then once I have landing clearance I point the ship's nose toward the slot and wait for the ship to stop slipping and move in that direction. You get gud at it after a while. Re-allocating power away from ENG as you approach the slot helps too.

On another note, have you considered that one of your thrusters may be stuck "on"? This can happen if you do not configure a "center dead-zone" on your thruster joysticks. Happened to me. Thrust off the pad only to find myself bouncing around the inside of the dock with a stuck (on) thruster. The embarrassment ended when the station lasers blew up my ship. You can configure a pretty large center dead-zone without affecting handling. Do it for ALL your joysticks, helps a lot with accurate flying.

Think it is tough to dock now? Try it without Flight Assist! Preferably somewhere you can't get shot up by the authorities.

 

[Kaocraft]

You can compensate a little bit with side/vertical thrusters, but mostly this is just a fact of life you have to accommodate in your maneuvering. The whole flight model in Elite is objects in space doing their best to pretend to be airplanes using a combination of directional thrusters. But the bigger and more massive an object becomes, the more it starts to behave like a real spaceship and this inertia manifests as "drift". If you practice a whole lot with FA off, you can maybe learn to compensate for drift using your main thrusters, but this is kind of hard to do because there aren't any heading displays on the HUD which makes it difficult to know which way you're pointing with respect to the direction you're moving.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I've gotten used to my Asp(epic drift), Python(not so bad, especially with DD3), and Anaconda drift just with practice.

I can more or less 'swish' my way through the slot, no matter the angle of attack originally.
I do use an awful lot of lateral thrust though!

 

[Hempstead]

Drop your speed down below 180 and apply 75% power and you'd be fine. Any speed above 180 and you will drift like crazy. W/o the 75% power, you turn and you will still drift like crazy.

Docking is easy... Drop out, turn and line up the station (point nose right in front of the mail slot where you expect to make the turn), boost once, 7.5km request docking, wait until 5 to 6 km out (90 degree alignment, 5km, 45 degree, 5.5km, straight on 6km), then reduce throttle slightly (90%), wait... DO NOT TURN, until you are almost at the extension line of the mail slot, your speed should be about 180m/s. Do not turn unless your speed is about 180 or below. Reduce throttle to the middle of blue zone, and turn to align with the mail slot. If your docking pad is the first row, further reduce speed to about 50 (anticipate to reduce to 50 as soon as you pass the mail slot completely. I often do full reverse for a brief second as soon as I pass the mail slot and turn into the pad). If last row, speed up to 100 to save time.

That's it. Works every time for me.

If you unfortunately drop out behind the station, i.e. you screw up your approach, then just point your nose right at the edge of the station front surface, just enough so you can pass to the front. Boost! Then reduce throttle to 90%, wait until you are about 4km out, full reverse. DO NOT TURN... your speed should be about 180 when you are almost lined up to the extension line of the mail slot. Again, reduce speed to middle of blue zone, and turn to align... the rest is the same.

Of course, the above procedures assume you put 4 pips to the ENG. And yes, I have a 7A Thruster.

And one more trick... if you find yourself coming in too hot... drop your landing gear and use it as a speed brake. Your drop your landing gear, the speed drop like a rock quick. I know this doesn't make sense for airless space flight, but that's how the game mechanics work. Don't ask me why. You can always retract the landing gear to regain speed and reduce the chance of tangling your landing gear at the mail slot.

Edit: One more trick. Sometimes, I find myself coming in way too hot, so hot that even the landing gear air brake trick won't cut it, like in the situation where there is an NPC Elite 'Conda on my tail and I am trying to get him killed by the station. I would intentionally scrape the mail slot with my Cutter's bottom (landing gear up, of course), b/c I have shield. That would drastically reduce my speed in no time (plus a little manageable bounce).

 

[Spiridon]

I use this trick: whenever approaching the slot at an awkward angle, I face the slot while drifting. At the moment when you almost look straight into the slot, I abruptly cut speed to 0, wait half a second for it to have an effect, then full speed ahead for a second while making a full roll. Somehow it straightens the drift.

Oh, and I don't use thrusters at all during the approach. I fly her like a plane.

 

[CMDR-AD]

I've noticed in my Type-9 that there is a sudden strange lateral drift, as soon as I cross into the airlock. The ship is heading in straight and true, then just slides hard sideways without any inputs from me, as I cross through the rack/airlock.

Speed is about 87m/s (full throttle) during airlock transit. Strangely, full opposite lateral thrust doesn't seem to do much of anything to counter it.

Watching the NPC Type-9 ships, they don't seem to have this issue, or are countering it. Orca doesn't seem to do this, last I flew it, either. I don't recall my old Anaconda doing this, but it's been quite a few months. And I do realize/expect the Type-X to be poorer/worst performers in general (even if I mounted the $52 million worth of thrusters), but still I wondered.

Is this due to the transition to/from "rotation assist" in the station, perhaps?