How do you choose your landing area?

[MarcusVatta]

One of the things I've struggled with post-horizons is deciding when and where to land (or at least descend to < 1km).

I've kind of got a bit of a checklist:
Is the planet unusual? (different colour, or close to a binary/Trinary star, etc.)
Are there unusual features on the planet itself? (discolored canyons, large or distinct craters, etc.)

The thing is, recently, I have begun to feel like I haven't seen what the planet is really like. It's a bit like visiting Earth, but only touching down at the grand canyon, yellowstone, iceland, everest, fuji, or the arizona crater. While those may be the some of the most spectacular large-scale geologic features (that I can think of off the top of my head), it's not a good representation of what Earth is like.

On the other hand, there are so many planets, and so much that I'll never see, why not stick to the highlights?

I'm still figuring it out. How do you decide weather to land and how do you decide on a landing area?

 

[Traveller_GG]

Whether to land is completely down to how fickle I am. I like to land on potato planets just 'cos but others... when the mood takes me

As to WHERE to land - that's easy. I look for flat spots. Time with the Rock Rats taught me to land where you can get speed up with the SRV as struggling through mountainous areas is just a pain.

There are always exceptions to this: sometimes a major geographical feature (like a stupidly deep crater) will have me aiming towards it.

 

[mls]

When i go down for sight seeing, i usually land at several locations on a planet. before landing i do a flyby to spot some prominent features like high mountains, craters, ravines and the lot. and then there is usually 4-5 locations i go to.

if i go down for prospecting i pick the flattest spot i can find. sometimes it's still hard to find a landable spot.
i noticed that it's easiest to just hover above a reasonable flat spot even tho it shows up as red and not landable. when you are at a height of about 10-15m, just cut your thrusters while having deployed landing gear and the ship will sink to the ground and eventually land itself with little to no pain.

 

[newman1702]

It depends entirely on the reason for landing in the first place; sometimes I just want materials in which case I'll land on a flat plain so I can drive around fast without getting into a too hilly terrain. If I'm going down because the place looks beautiful and I want to do some screenshots, then I'll try to find some nice terrain on a spot on the surface that will still have that nice moon / ringed gg companion / planetary nebula / milky way / whatever on the horizon.