In all my time playing Elite, I never knew about this...

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It gets better, as soon are your distance is in the blue, you can go full throttle again.

You "exit supercruise" window will reduce to 1.5 seconds though, but, if you nail it, you save seconds again. Very handy if you think you are about to get interdicted.
 

Minonian

Banned
In supercruise, you can fly at full throttle, until you hit seven seconds distance, at which point you should drop to 75% throttle, and finish the journey.

Knowledge courtesy of some unnamed CMDR.

My trading and passengers are getting more time efficient now!

You can go even faster if you have a ship with higher turnrate, wait until about 5-6 seconds, than take down to half throttle, and spiral toward the target, keeping the destination above you in the upper part of the target position marker. A lot of practice necessary to do it right, but spares a lot of time. Loop of shame? :D

Please! This is a pro trick and you can reach your traget faster with it.
 
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In supercruise, you can fly at full throttle, until you hit seven seconds distance, at which point you should drop to 75% throttle, and finish the journey.

Knowledge courtesy of some unnamed CMDR.

My trading and passengers are getting more time efficient now!

Based in the amount of times this is mentioned, and how active you are on the forums, I'm highly surprised! :p

I still find out daft new things too. :)

I'm trying to get better at using the gravity brake. :D
Stay at 100% throttle, align your destination so a gravity well is between you and your port, and skim it the planet to use it's gravity to slow you down.
Takes practice, but quite a few times I can brake from max throttle to less than 1Mm/s just in time to drop safely. Sometimes even aligned with the slot. :D

Other times I simply overshoot.
Or hit the orbital cruise zone and cartwheel through space. :p

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
 
It's 6 seconds not 7.

Actually it's more a guideline.
On the final of planetary approaches I'd go for more like 10 seconds to prevent a faceplant.
6 seconds can get a bit out of hand if you just tweak the throttle a bit to much, it's OK if you're awake! 😏
So 7 seconds will allow a more controlled and relaxed approach.
 
So, here's one that I only found out a few weeks back - you can align properly with stations whilst in supercruise.

The blue "alignment" box means nowt - only that you are pointed the right way; but if you manipulate your flight path so that you approach the station's model in your left hand display from the "front", then when you drop out of supercruise, you will, indeed, be lined up with the front door of the station - which saves a lot of time flying around the station in real space at 100m/s
 
I break this rule all the time and "foolishly" beat everyone in my wing to the destination by a minute or more.

I'm not convinced that the 'loop of shame' is actually all that much slower. If you pile up to your destination and then break last minute, yes you'll zoom past, but then can return at a more controlled speed and it seems just about as quick as slowing down with speed set for 6 seconds.
 
So, here's one that I only found out a few weeks back - you can align properly with stations whilst in supercruise.

The blue "alignment" box means nowt - only that you are pointed the right way; but if you manipulate your flight path so that you approach the station's model in your left hand display from the "front", then when you drop out of supercruise, you will, indeed, be lined up with the front door of the station - which saves a lot of time flying around the station in real space at 100m/s

lol, me too! I don't know when this was brought in, or was there from the start but I does save a lot of time, also makes supercruise more entertaining getting it lined up perfectly.
 
So, here's one that I only found out a few weeks back - you can align properly with stations whilst in supercruise.

The blue "alignment" box means nowt - only that you are pointed the right way; but if you manipulate your flight path so that you approach the station's model in your left hand display from the "front", then when you drop out of supercruise, you will, indeed, be lined up with the front door of the station - which saves a lot of time flying around the station in real space at 100m/s

This is new with the latest release, so it's not really a shock you didn't know before.
The old way was however just to aim between planet and space station whole in SC then turn towards space station with planet behind you. This was usually pretty accurate. And it still works well.
😊
 
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I'm not convinced that the 'loop of shame' is actually all that much slower. If you pile up to your destination and then break last minute, yes you'll zoom past, but then can return at a more controlled speed and it seems just about as quick as slowing down with speed set for 6 seconds.

I'm not talking about the loop of shame though. There are a few slightly more advanced techniques of getting there at 3-5sec. No back tracking or shame loops are required, unless you pooch up the approach.
 
This has probably been said already but, from another thread on the same subject ...

---

As a Buckyball Racer (where races are won and lost on the supercruise station approach) I justed wanted to add a couple of comments here.

First of all, the "loop of shame" can actually be faster than the careful 0:06 ETA approach (yup, 0:06 is the tipping point, under that you're in danger of an overshot, at or above that and you'll be fine).

The real trick to fast station approaches is planetary braking, where you make a full speed approach (allowing your ETA to drop to 0:05 or even less) but arrange to have your speed dragged right back down again at the last minute by cutting really close past the gravity well of the planet the station is orbiting.

I attempted to illustrate this (far from perfectly) in the training video I did for the Lavecon Buckyball Race ...

[video=youtube_share;6PLCYL4qCqU]https://youtu.be/6PLCYL4qCqU[/video]

However, Cmdr Cookiehole, one of our all-time top racers, often favours simply going full pelt, skimming the planet as described, overshooting and then simply looping back around to the entrance. This has repeatedly been proved to be significantly faster than any form of overly cautious approach.

So not a "loop of shame" ... rather a "Buckyball Loop" :D
 

Minonian

Banned
Aye, and sun buckyballin also came handy when you have several K's of LY to go within a short time and you don't want to have a secondary fuel tank in your Xploder Explorer. You just have to keep yourself close to the sun while you targettin the next solar system. Basically you surfing trough its corona to refuel.

Pro tip; Tick off all the non main sequence (non fuel source star types) when you planning your route in the galaxy map.

And with enough practice you can keep yourself close to the sun before jumping to the next system without frying your ship. in this case you have your heat levels above, 90% So it's just Buckminsterfuller-ed but not roasted. :D

( Yep! it was easy peasy to understand where the name came from. ;) )
 
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I use :

  1. 7 seconds for approach to planets
  2. When the distance drops into Mm : full throttle
  3. When just below 5 seconds : throttle zero.

For planetary landing I use :

  1. 7 seconds to approach the planet
  2. increase approach time to 10 seconds and maintain
  3. Fly round planet until the Orange target circle is solid, and fully inside the curve of the planet
  4. Maintain 40-50 degrees on the approach

I find that a straight 7 seconds on planetary landings sometimes causes an early drop out on approach, which wastes waaaaaay more time than approaching at 10 seconds rather than 7 could ever cause.
 
Mystery to me though is throttle for planetary landings. Most of the time 7 seconds seems to end up with being too fast for orbital cruise.

"Too fast" is based solely on descent rate. You can go faster at, say, -15 degrees than -45 degrees because the vertical component of your velocity vector is less.

At orbital cruise altitude, ie the blue circle, your descent rate may not exceed 200km/s, as indicated on the HUD. At the drop altitude it may not exceed 5km/s. At any given altitude between those ranges the maximum allowed rate scales according to what I suspect is an inverse square law but haven't tested enough. It is certainly not a linear interpolation.
 
I use :

  1. 7 seconds for approach to planets
  2. When the distance drops into Mm : full throttle
  3. When just below 5 seconds : throttle zero.

For planetary landing I use :

  1. 7 seconds to approach the planet
  2. increase approach time to 10 seconds and maintain
  3. Fly round planet until the Orange target circle is solid, and fully inside the curve of the planet
  4. Maintain 40-50 degrees on the approach

I find that a straight 7 seconds on planetary landings sometimes causes an early drop out on approach, which wastes waaaaaay more time than approaching at 10 seconds rather than 7 could ever cause.

Good rules of thumb there! I must say that fast planetary approaches, avoiding a "too fast for orbital cruise" message, are a really beautifully balanced bit of game mechanic - more of an art than a science. One other thing I will say, pay attention to the sound of your engines! The detailed feedback they give you on what's happening (and what's about to happen) is just incredible. I swear I could do a fast approach blindfold!
 
Mystery to me though is throttle for planetary landings. Most of the time 7 seconds seems to end up with being too fast for orbital cruise.
"Too fast" is based solely on descent rate. You can go faster at, say, -15 degrees than -45 degrees because the vertical component of your velocity vector is less.
Yep but it is very hard to judge as planets are vastly different in size sometimes. The problem is that a tiny planet with the base near the horizon still presents a steep angle, but for a huge planet you can have the base further from the horizon and still have a shallower angle.

Gravity obviously affects rate of descent too, so the variables are too numerous for me to accurately optimise the approach in the short time it takes to start dropping from OC. My little head can't handle it all :)

That's why I use 10 seconds for planets. It's just easier.
 
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