Hi everybody,
After 3 years on ED (and many more on the first Elite, back in the 80s), I decided to learn FA OFF. Why ? Because I'm frustrated to fly in a spaceship and to pilot it like a plane. Frustrated to evolve in a full 3D scene without being able to take advantage of it, restricted to follow the curve the FA decided for me. I now want to feel the sensations of a real spaceship, like the pioneers of the space adventure.
The goal of this post is not no give technical advices on FA OFF, there are some very good tutorial about this. I just want to write a little feedback on my humble experience. I will be glad if this can help an hesitating player to "cross the river".
I still don't play PvP (just began some CQC, it's fun), so there is no real need to master FA OFF. Consider this as a challenge. I gave it a try, soon after starting the game, it's been a total waste of time. I was not prepared to that. And switching to FA OFF just to see how it feels, is a bad idea. After 5 minutes trying to randomly stabilize your uncontrolable ship, after crashing on every wall in or around the station, being stuck between a wall and a metallic beam, being turned into glowing dust by the security because of loitering the neighboring pads, your blood pressure raising up to 25, feeling dizzy enough to puke on the keyboard, you switch back to FA ON, cool down, have a coffee and return to your current missions. It's a fail.
Of course, like almost everybody, I watched Isinona's videos, with a dribble of saliva at the corner of my mouth, just thinking "OMG, how the hell is this possible, is this guy a human ?". I tried to practice with other good tutorials, but ... no way. The exercices on those videos are good, and it may be useful for some players, but they did not help me.
So I decided to try a more extreme way : disconnecting the FA ON button. Forever ! And do what I can do, no matter if it takes an hour to achieve something that could be done in 30s with FA ON. I decided to search for an outpost inside an asteroid belt or planet ring. There's just one, a few LY from the bubble, called Rho Platform, in system HIP 100539. This way, I can practice both docking and rocks dodging, in the same place. So I parked my long range FSD vessel at Esclangon Station in HIP 104349, bought a stock Sidewinder here, put it a slightly better FSD just to reach Rho Platform, and docked it there. Docking in Rho Platform is important, because in case of crash, you respawn from there. Once docked, I switched to FA OFF.
Day 1 : Following Isinona's advice, I put 0 pip to engine, to halve the max speed. And with the landing gear deployed, the speed is once again halved (max 57 with a Sidewinder), so you can train even more comfortably. Leaving the outpost is easy (up thrust, you're done). I spent a few minutes turning around the outpost, but without aiming a particular point to reach. Because when you focus on a point, you over-compensate your moves to keep in sight of this point, and quickly start spinning around every known or unknown axes. Just let the ship go where it wants to go, only bring soft compensation to keep turning randomly around the outpost. The only condition was to keep close to the outpost.
When you feel a little better with keeping the ship almost stable, it's time to dock. My first landing on the assigned pad took 6 minutes ! You can laugh, I don't mind
I thought I would have to cancel the request and ask for a new one to reset the countdown, but it was not even necessary. That's stupid, but the satisfaction of being able to land the ship, even after a grotesque and hilarious dance, is worth living.
Choosing an outpost, and not a station, is very important. In a station, there are some additional traps you don't have on an outpost. First, crossing the "mail slot" is very very hard, may be harder than landing on the pad (IMHO). You can be rammed by other ships, if you get stuck in the mail slot you get fines, alerts and other deadly countdown from the security, no need to add useless stress ! And once in the station, you can bounce on the walls, crash your ship and have problems as soon as you get too close to another pad than the assigned one. So, a basic outpost is far better to avoid all those problems, and focus on the landing pad.
I repeated the docking exercice 4 or 5 times, with mixed success. As you progress, you realise that you use more and more the main thruster, instead of up/down and lateral thrusters.
As soon as you can make it with docking on an outpost, even if it's tedious, go to the nearest station to practice the same exercice, but with the mail slot to cross first, and the reduced distances inside the station.
After 3 years on ED (and many more on the first Elite, back in the 80s), I decided to learn FA OFF. Why ? Because I'm frustrated to fly in a spaceship and to pilot it like a plane. Frustrated to evolve in a full 3D scene without being able to take advantage of it, restricted to follow the curve the FA decided for me. I now want to feel the sensations of a real spaceship, like the pioneers of the space adventure.
The goal of this post is not no give technical advices on FA OFF, there are some very good tutorial about this. I just want to write a little feedback on my humble experience. I will be glad if this can help an hesitating player to "cross the river".
I still don't play PvP (just began some CQC, it's fun), so there is no real need to master FA OFF. Consider this as a challenge. I gave it a try, soon after starting the game, it's been a total waste of time. I was not prepared to that. And switching to FA OFF just to see how it feels, is a bad idea. After 5 minutes trying to randomly stabilize your uncontrolable ship, after crashing on every wall in or around the station, being stuck between a wall and a metallic beam, being turned into glowing dust by the security because of loitering the neighboring pads, your blood pressure raising up to 25, feeling dizzy enough to puke on the keyboard, you switch back to FA ON, cool down, have a coffee and return to your current missions. It's a fail.
Of course, like almost everybody, I watched Isinona's videos, with a dribble of saliva at the corner of my mouth, just thinking "OMG, how the hell is this possible, is this guy a human ?". I tried to practice with other good tutorials, but ... no way. The exercices on those videos are good, and it may be useful for some players, but they did not help me.
So I decided to try a more extreme way : disconnecting the FA ON button. Forever ! And do what I can do, no matter if it takes an hour to achieve something that could be done in 30s with FA ON. I decided to search for an outpost inside an asteroid belt or planet ring. There's just one, a few LY from the bubble, called Rho Platform, in system HIP 100539. This way, I can practice both docking and rocks dodging, in the same place. So I parked my long range FSD vessel at Esclangon Station in HIP 104349, bought a stock Sidewinder here, put it a slightly better FSD just to reach Rho Platform, and docked it there. Docking in Rho Platform is important, because in case of crash, you respawn from there. Once docked, I switched to FA OFF.
Day 1 : Following Isinona's advice, I put 0 pip to engine, to halve the max speed. And with the landing gear deployed, the speed is once again halved (max 57 with a Sidewinder), so you can train even more comfortably. Leaving the outpost is easy (up thrust, you're done). I spent a few minutes turning around the outpost, but without aiming a particular point to reach. Because when you focus on a point, you over-compensate your moves to keep in sight of this point, and quickly start spinning around every known or unknown axes. Just let the ship go where it wants to go, only bring soft compensation to keep turning randomly around the outpost. The only condition was to keep close to the outpost.
When you feel a little better with keeping the ship almost stable, it's time to dock. My first landing on the assigned pad took 6 minutes ! You can laugh, I don't mind
I thought I would have to cancel the request and ask for a new one to reset the countdown, but it was not even necessary. That's stupid, but the satisfaction of being able to land the ship, even after a grotesque and hilarious dance, is worth living.Choosing an outpost, and not a station, is very important. In a station, there are some additional traps you don't have on an outpost. First, crossing the "mail slot" is very very hard, may be harder than landing on the pad (IMHO). You can be rammed by other ships, if you get stuck in the mail slot you get fines, alerts and other deadly countdown from the security, no need to add useless stress ! And once in the station, you can bounce on the walls, crash your ship and have problems as soon as you get too close to another pad than the assigned one. So, a basic outpost is far better to avoid all those problems, and focus on the landing pad.
I repeated the docking exercice 4 or 5 times, with mixed success. As you progress, you realise that you use more and more the main thruster, instead of up/down and lateral thrusters.
As soon as you can make it with docking on an outpost, even if it's tedious, go to the nearest station to practice the same exercice, but with the mail slot to cross first, and the reduced distances inside the station.
![[VR] M4st0d0n](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/182/182772.jpg?1569064854){kind=avatar}
