Exiting supercruise into the station (Orbis)...

[Cmdr Andy B]

if it is a bug there are two options to fix it:

one: extend the range of SC dropout so you are always clear of the station. we had a longer range before and some people complained as it took a few minutes to dock while other people camped outside the stations boundaries and picked off incoming traders, everyone getting shot up complained about that as there was no way to escape it.

two: move the navigation point further up the orbis star ports so you no longer crash into the back of them if you approach from that angle. the problem here is that if you come at it from the side of the docking bay you would be dropped right into the path of either traffic exiting the station, or the security patrol flying around it. hit a ship coming out of SC and you will be just as dead as if you'd hit the station but now there is a chance of you taking someone else with you. now you have 2 people complaining about instant death instead of one.

neither method of fixing it provides an idea solution, therefore i think how it is now should stay and if its working as intended its not a bug.

 

[anikaiful]

if it is a bug there are two options to fix it:

one: extend the range of SC dropout so you are always clear of the station. we had a longer range before and some people complained as it took a few minutes to dock while other people camped outside the stations boundaries and picked off incoming traders, everyone getting shot up complained about that as there was no way to escape it.

two: move the navigation point further up the orbis star ports so you no longer crash into the back of them if you approach from that angle. the problem here is that if you come at it from the side of the docking bay you would be dropped right into the path of either traffic exiting the station, or the security patrol flying around it. hit a ship coming out of SC and you will be just as dead as if you'd hit the station but now there is a chance of you taking someone else with you. now you have 2 people complaining about instant death instead of one.

neither method of fixing it provides an idea solution, therefore i think how it is now should stay and if its working as intended its not a bug.

Or fix #3: due length of orbises, make distance calculated from both ends. Just one nanosecond calculation to add for safe entry.

 

[Wurmfist]

I never even knew this was an issue. I approach the station from whatever direction, I don't look at all if I am outside or inside the stations orbit and I've never had this issue. I drop out of SC as soon as it says it is safe to do so and sometimes I'm in the back of the station, sometimes I'm in the front. I would say I was getting lucky but I've docked more times than I even know now on every different station type. I hope I don't experience this problem.

 

[Kadius]

I've had this happen to me once in my T6, but thankfully I just bounced off and took very little hull damage.

 

[anikaiful]

I never even knew this was an issue. I approach the station from whatever direction, I don't look at all if I am outside or inside the stations orbit and I've never had this issue. I drop out of SC as soon as it says it is safe to do so and sometimes I'm in the back of the station, sometimes I'm in the front. I would say I was getting lucky but I've docked more times than I even know now on every different station type. I hope I don't experience this problem.

Yea, I enter whatever direction I decide too, but I think them collisions are more an issue with network issues between client and other people/server (which doesn't seem to exist with my connection, but YMMV). Get a latency spike at wrong time, and *kaboom* - I think.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

Or fix #3: due length of orbises, make distance calculated from both ends. Just one nanosecond calculation to add for safe entry.

i had thought of that but have you noticed that the rear of the station is out of the no fire zone? i could see it leading to the same problem as described in #1: people camping it to attack unwary traders who have no way of escaping them.

 

[Vincent Starson]

I was in my asp, flying dirty (no insurance cash), when the station appeared to zoom in. I had approached from behind the station, with the station sandwiched between me and the planet. I am pretty sure that it put me inside the station or almost inside it. I alt tabbed and shut off the game as fast as I could. When I logged back in, I was 40 meters to the right (instead of dead center) and outside of the station. I survived, but just barely. I never fly dirty anymore.

Now I'm in a type 7, and I always fly in an arc in SC to drop out of orbit at the top, bottom, or inside between the planet/station. I find that what others say here is true, the station faces the planet more or less. I haven't had any close calls in the type 7 because of it.

To those who have lost their ship to this, it is not their fault. They should be reimbursed after ticketing it. It says "Safe Disengage Ready" not "Safe-Or-Complete-Destruction Disengage Ready". It's a bug.

The ship's nav computer just needs to put them 20km back instead of 10km, if approaching from the far side of the station. So instead of ship destruction, you just take a longer time in normal space. This would give an incentive to control your SC more.

 

[bamber]

is not the simple answer to change the SC drop out distance

It was originally at 20km and people complained that the travel was too long - now its 8-10 and you can possibly hit an orbis

a drop at 15km would make it more or less impossible to hit a station

Yes you can arrive from one direction only but not being able to hit it would be better

Importantly if this happens have you ticketed it? a 1 in 1000000 chance might not be worth the effort a 1 in 10000 may well be

 

[Geers]

ask yourself this, now you know about the issue will you ever again exit SC outside the orbit of a star port you don't know with 100% certainty is a Coriolis? if you do so and you die because of it will you continue to blame the game or will you think to yourself 'Doh! i forgot about that!'

knowledge is power - you now have the power to avoid the problem and if you do it again and die there will be nobody to blame but yourself.

If opening normalprogram.exe crashes my computer I'm not going to open normalprogram.exe but that doesn't mean there isn't something wrong with normalprogram.exe.

There is no documentation anywhere to support the "that's supposed to happen" hypothesis. If you find some go ahead and show us.

 

[defekt]

I expect the fix will be either having all ships drop out of SC 1km farther out or the nav beacon will move toward the station's center of mass along with a probable increase in the radius of the no-fire zone.

It is a design fault and no amount of talk about only aproaching from inside the orbit line is going to change that. Having players wipe themselves out on the @rse end of an Orbis through no fault of their own makes no sense in either the real or imagined world.

 

[Cidcaldensfey]

This thread is another example of the stupid crap that goes on in this game. "Oh yeah, the station is an Orbis station so you need to approach it at a 90 degree angle from over the horizon of the planet's equator and then reduce speed to 20 while reciting the following verse three times over". The information isn't presented anywhere and I absolutely refuse to accept 'you learn by experience'. No, sorry but NO. There is nothing in the game, documentation, ANYWHERE which doesn't involve player intervention, which says "You need to do this a particular away, otherwise you can lose all your crap you worked for." Players making excuses saying it's another player's fault is a bunch of crap. No, it's not the player's fault, it's the fact the game has information left out from it which results in people losing ships.

It hasn't happened to me and I already know about approaching stations from planets they are neighboring just because the entrance faces the planet/moon, but seriously. It's not even about handholding, it's about the fact that the information is absolutely NOWHERE. And people are being punished for no reason other than some jerk purposely left those details out. And what bothers me more is that players think it's perfectly OK to have a game like this. It's basically excusing and accepting mediocrity.

FYI, the only reason why I know about which direction the stations face is because I watched gameplay someone recorded of Elite for the commodore 64 and noticed each station faced the planets why were in orbit over. But the fact I had to go back and look at something almost 30 years ago to get information...