Improve Planet Landing

[aRJay]

I just spent 5 minutes trying to land near some plants I needed to scan, WITH auto-land. It screwed up so much I just turned it off in the end.

I turn it off on any ship with an ADC.

I used to faff about a lot trying to land until I realised that the reason I was losing the blue indicator was that the vertical thrusters were obviously aligned with the ship but the ship’s vertical no longer aligned with the planets causing me to move out of alignment as I thrust down. Eventually I realised the simple way to drop vertically onto the landing point was to orient the ship then go to FA-Off the ship then simply falls to the right spot nearly every time.

So much better than the ADC.

My issue with the Mandalay is that I can’t get used to how much of the ship is below the cockpit that the ground keeps hitting when I am flying low.*

Landing it was pretty much like any other ship barring occasionally having to rotate so that the wing wasn’t hitting the side of something.

*Which is why my current Exobiology ship is the Cobra V.

 

[Aerendyl]

Or blow over.

Or blow up.

 

[Shurimal]

This is such good advice (unless you’re on a 10g planet ). No idea why I’ve never thought about it, I used to do a lot of FA-Off landing but never put two and two together.

The trick on high G planets is to set the FA binding to hold instead of toggle and tap it briefly for landing. And the second trick is to have 500+ raw MJ of shield

 

[Aerendyl]

Here, look at the attached images. This gently sloping land is all red. Then the third image is where some blue flashed and I was finally able to land... partially hovering in the air. The two back feet were on (or in) the landscape but the front was hovering. This is a bit silly - there is no reason a ship should not be able to land on these gentle landscapes.

 

[Dragsham]

Just land as close as you can to where the samples are.. and use your artemis suits jump capability which is a hoot ! IF it's G5 extra jump, extra battery, extra air and night vision.
But if it's a high G then yeah landing in mountains can be a bummer.
The buggy is also handy too.
And yeah an air drop would be amazing + they have the tech already.
Auto calling the ship afterwards might mean a hike or rather a bouncy flying thing in a good artemis suit, or buggy ride.
Watch out for those geysers hehehe

 

[CMDR Lefty Jackson]

Remember, space is hard.

If it was easy then we'd have valet parking on every planet.

I own two Mandalays, and both land just fine.

But then I don't nitpick, if I get on the ground and haven't blown up, it's a good landing!

 

[aRJay]

The trick on high G planets is to set the FA binding to hold instead of toggle and tap it briefly for landing. And the second trick is to have 500+ raw MJ of shield

Sorry I forgot that some people have that bound to toggle for various reasons.

 

[metatheurgist]

Here, look at the attached images. This gently sloping land is all red. Then the third image is where some blue flashed and I was finally able to land... partially hovering in the air. The two back feet were on (or in) the landscape but the front was hovering. This is a bit silly - there is no reason a ship should not be able to land on these gentle landscapes.

I would prefer to see inverse kinematics on the landing gear so the ship can adjust to the landing spot more than the last 3 gameplay expansions.

 

[o2thaZ]

While they at it, they might aswell improve thrusters.
It doesn't make sense if you fly upside down while still pointing up the ship goes down on high g planets.
Ahhh magic grabbity.

 

[Aerendyl]

Please people, this is a very reasonable request. Why is it that when someone makes a very plain, obvious, reasonable request for something that would obviously be an improvement, there's always a bunch of folks saying "nah, I like it when my toast falls off my plate and the jam sticks to the kitchen floor"? This is the suggestion part of the forum, explicitly designed for suggestions!

 

[aRJay]

While they at it, they might aswell improve thrusters.
It doesn't make sense if you fly upside down while still pointing up the ship goes down on high g planets.
Ahhh magic grabbity.

The magic is that the approach suite only upgrades the thrusters on the underside of the ship and ties those uprated thrusters into the FA system to compensate for gravity automatically.

 

[aRJay]

Please people, this is a very reasonable request. Why is it that when someone makes a very plain, obvious, reasonable request for something that would obviously be an improvement, there's always a bunch of folks saying "nah, I like it when my toast falls off my plate and the jam sticks to the kitchen floor"? This is the suggestion part of the forum, explicitly designed for suggestions!

It is indeed the place for suggestions.

But as you have noticed the player base rarely agrees on anything, especially on what is or is not an improvement.
There is usually even more disagreement on how reasonable a request is, especially if the request is to fix something not seen as a major issue.

 

[gbjbaanb]

Please people, this is a very reasonable request. Why is it that when someone makes a very plain, obvious, reasonable request for something that would obviously be an improvement, there's always a bunch of folks saying "nah, I like it when my toast falls off my plate and the jam sticks to the kitchen floor"? This is the suggestion part of the forum, explicitly designed for suggestions!

they've been conditioned to like bad game design that is only there to stretch small bits of fun into interminable grindfest. After all, staring at the screen for an hour shouting "you ** piece of *" still counts as game-engagement, that's a win for whoever designed most of this. We should be urging FDev to make as much of the tedium and broken bits minimally annoying as possible, so they can enhance the fun bits. But anyway...

As for landing, I find the Mandalay can land on a lot of broken terrain, the angle seems to be key. Landing on a slope with the autopilot wants to align with the planet, not the slope. and so if you nudge it to match the slope it often turns blue. Then decides in its feeble AI brain to level out and its red again.

 

[aRJay]

...

As for landing, I find the Mandalay can land on a lot of broken terrain, the angle seems to be key. Landing on a slope with the autopilot wants to align with the planet, not the slope. and so if you nudge it to match the slope it often turns blue. Then decides in its feeble AI brain to level out and its red again.

Yes turn so the wings are parallel to the slope then angle to match the slope then when blue hold FA-Off and drop to landing, release FA-Off if speed gets too fast.

The ship levelling to the planet is part of FA-On and I think is altitude dependent.

 

[V'larr]

It is indeed the place for suggestions.

But as you have noticed the player base rarely agrees on anything, especially on what is or is not an improvement.
There is usually even more disagreement on how reasonable a request is, especially if the request is to fix something not seen as a major issue.

Said disagreement is inherently unreasonable when the request in question has no detriment whatsoever, even to its most diehard detractors.

This is a thing that has been bugging me since the first release of Horizons, it's just been on a back burner behind all the other neglected problems and issues that serve as a constant reminder to measure one's expectations thoroughly in playing this game.

 

[V'larr]

My proposal on improving the finding a landing spot is to change the way the landing radar works rather than changing how the ships interact with the terrain.

I regularly find myself in a situation where the HUD briefly flashed blue but it is frustrating to tweak the ship around to find that exact spot again. If I could see where that spot was on the HUD it would help me get into exactly the right spot more quickly.

Show the blue terrain for potentially suitable landing spots on the landing HUD radar so the pilot can find them more easily, rather than only having the terrain/ship go blue when it is over a suitable spot. Having the HUD indicate not just pitch and roll angle required but also yaw would be a helpful QoL addition too.

I've been using a Cobra MkV recently & it's clear that the fidelity of it's collision model is much finer than older ships, meaning that if I find any blue spot to potentially land on chances are I can actually land there. A rework of the other (older) ships would probably help improve the chances of finding a suitable landing spot too.

This would certainly help add more quality of life, but the underlying issue of the game being way too picky/touchy about what is and isn't valid (and often in ways that make no sense, as highlighted by the pictures posted in this thread) also ought to be addressed directly.

I also think the landing HUD in general could stand to be improved, not just for planetary landings. It's often too zoomed in and not showing enough information about what's around you, and triggers much too soon before you're actually centered over a landing pad. But that's a topic for another thread someday.

 

[V'larr]

Yeah, we need an "I WIN" button so we don't have to do anything in game except push a button.

So you're satisfied so long as the buttons you can push don't actually go in very well, get stuck, or simply have no function?

The audacity to throw competitive mindset into a thread about a QOL to planetary landings, is utterly baffling to me.

 

[anShpan]

Did about 7b Exobio in Mandalay and would insist that it is currently has one of, if not the best landing abilities in game. Never needed to deploy SRV since it lands basically anywhere we want it to, just do not forget to use its fast yaw to fit those wings between rocks / terrain obstacles.

DBX can easily compete in landing footprint due to absence of wings, but subjectively I think Mandalay is more tolerant to high slope of potential landing spot.

 

[Cmdr Virbius]

I used to do the majority of exobiology using an Anaconda (!) and can honestly say that even fungoida & frutexa in mountainous terrain didn't trouble me. Parking a Mandalay is child's play by comparison. And when it's true that the lessons we learn best are the ones we learn the hard way maybe using an Anaconda for a while is the way to learn how to land a Mandalay after all.

 

[Aerendyl]

Challenge! Which land is "flat"? According to Elite, one of these UNSUITABLE TERRAIN!!!