Newcomer / Intro Is there a faster but still safe way to approach a landing?

[King Drax I]

Approaching a target base to land is really slow, even with the engines at max. Beginning player, sidewinder basic loadout. Went to a place on a planet surface, a factory, and it took ages to get down to land. I am reluctant to use the FSD that close to my target. Is there a faster way? Also at one point the ship automatically went into a glide. What's that all about, then?

TIA
Drax

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Approaching a target base to land is really slow, even with the engines at max. Beginning player, sidewinder basic loadout. Went to a place on a planet surface, a factory, and it took ages to get down to land. I am reluctant to use the FSD that close to my target. Is there a faster way? Also at one point the ship automatically went into a glide. What's that all about, then?

TIA
Drax

Sounds like you need to approach the planet more slowly so you don't drop out of supercruise too early.
Use the approach glide and you can drop out close the station.

If your descent is too fast, shallow or steep you will drop out of SC and may take a tiny bit of hull damage.

If you make a mistake it's usually faster to head into orbit again and re-approach.
Otherwise you can use FAOff to fall more quickly too.
Just don't go splat.

o7

 

[Faded Glory]

Approach with your destination targeted (base, mission objective, whatever) in SC. As you get close to the planet you will get the planetary HUD showing up, and then you will enter orbital cruise. I try to keep my time to arrival between 10 and 15 seconds speed wise.

Try and get your angle of approach between 35º and 45º (using the planetary HUD), and try to get your target to around 100Km at the point you enter glide, which is indicated on the HUD by the 'Drop' mark. You will stay in glide, and can steer your ship but you cannot alter the speed which is 2,500 m/s, until you are around 6 or 7 km above the planet at which point you drop out to normal flight.

(Glide is simply a flight model between the speeds of orbital cruise and normal flight. If you come in too steep or too shallow it can fail, but otherwise it's automatic.)

Once you get a hang of it, you will drop out within 10km of your target. If you drop out further away, then at normal flight speeds, fast as they are, it can take a long time to get anywhere bearing in mind that planets are 1:1 scale, so if you are 100km from your target, you have to travel 100km, and a Sidewinder 'only' goes around 200 m/s.

Hope this helps. Have fun, you'll get the hang of it with a bit of practice, and there's generally plenty of help here in the newcomers forum.

 

[Ashnak]

Looks like we got a new recruit here

If you want to see how fast landing goes, look for Buckyball Racing threads with videos. If I may be so bold - Chicken Run was one event with planetary landings at bases, and there's also one or two videos in that thread - especially CMDR Bruski's run and analysis here.

In general, the safe, but slow and boring approach is to set your throttle to the middle of the blue at 8 (planets)...6 (space) seconds tiem to target and keep it there. That'll get you to your target. Eventually. Anything else depends on the locality. Gravity slows down your ship (you may have noticed the "slow down" warning in your HUD when you're too fast for the local gravity field). You can use that to your advantage in so-called gravity braking maneouvres. Approach a gravity well (a.k.a. planet) just right, and the gravitational slowdown will drop you right at the doorstep of your target station.
Of course - do it wrong, and you'll get dumped into that planet's exclusion zone, with some minor engine damage, a cooldown penalty and a slow slog back out again.

Planetary landings are even trickier, and they get even more trickier the more massive that planet gets (the core idea of Chicken Run). Ideally, you want to approach your target base as fast as possible, drop into glide (that's the part between supercruise and planetary flight - you're still at a moderately high speed of 2500 m/s, but not in supercruise any more) so you can approach the base at a glide angle between 45 and 60 degrees and basically drop out of glide at less than 5 km above the pad. The lower your glide angle, the longer the glide, and the further away from the base you'll drop.
Approach the SC drop too fast, though, and you'll get the dreaded "too fast" message, resulting in an emergency drop right there, no glide and instead a long flight to the base (or return to SC once your FSD has cooled down and make another try).

For really fast landings, though:
- if you hit the pad, your shields will buffer the impact at quite high speeds
- small ships bounce harder than large ships
- the angle between the pad and the control tower is an excellent trap

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

^Lol, paging Cmdr Jmanis.

 

[aRJay]

The next fastest way to land at a base, after doing the glide properly, is to arrange your approach to the planet so that the base is vertically beneath you then head straight down zeroing the throttle before reaching the DRP point this will put you about 40 km from the base, with some minor damage, a glide error can leave you hundreds of km away. Note this approach is especially bad on higher gravity worlds and should only be attempted when really bored or if you can't master the glide.

 

[King Drax I]

All great advice, thank you all for the quicke replies! I used to fly gliders for real, but never at a 45 degrees nose-down angle

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Some additional hints :

- Maximum speed to safely enter Orbital Cruise (still high above Planet) is 200km/sec; if that speed is exceeded passing the OC line, high chance of an unsafe dropout ("Too fast for Orbital Cruise")

- 6-7 sec ETA works great to approach Stations/Outposts in Orbit but can be too fast to approach Bases especially on smaller and tiny Moons; manually throttle back a little and listen to the Audio feedback of the FSD
(high-pitched audio originating from the FSD typically indicates an impending overshoot condition)

- the area directly around Orbital Cruise typically causes an undesired acceleration of the Ship, often requiring slight to distinct manual Throttle reduction (if not countered, will often cause overshoot conditions preventing proper Glide entry)

- standard speed to safely enter Glide is 2.5km/sec, higher speeds are normally tolerable but no later than ~5-7km/sec an unsafe dropout can be expected
(again, audio feedback from FSD indicates how things are going; if too fast reduce pitch to maximize distance to Glide entry point; if needed temporarily maneuver the Ship away from Target Base to preserve valid Pitch angle towards it)
(Autothrottle function ; when already at or below 2.5km/sec, setting max. Throttle when already near Glide dropoff point will not accelerate the Ship beyond safe parameters anymore, ensuring a safe Glide entry)

- -5 to -60deg Pitch are valid Glide parameters, but erroneous "Glide complete" premature Glide disengages can be observed at otherwise valid Pitch angles as high as -15deg especially at low Altitude and over rough Terrain

- temporarily turning Flight Assist off during Glide Phase can greatly increase maneuverability of the Ship, however at high risk of a Blackout (or Redout if inverted) when aggressively maneuvering

- dropping out of Glide typically occurs at ~7.5km above flat terrain
(one can lead a steep approach and push the nose down straight onto the Base at around 9-10km for fastest possible arrival; Caution : aggressive Glide exit can place the ship as low as 2.5-3km AGL with associated Sink Rate!)
(aggressive approaches not recommended in Large Vessels on Planets with High Gravity; absolutely not recommended on very high G Planets)

- inside Orbital Cruise, setting the Pitch near 0deg (-5 to +5 max.) at max. Throttle will afford drastically higher Speeds; use this Orbital Cruise function to quickly traverse a Planet Surface while at higher Altitude

- extra hint : while being inside Orbital Cruise, neither NPCs nor Players are able to interdict the own Ship; Frame Shift Drive Interdictors do not function on Targets inside Orbital Cruise
(useful when being chased leaving a landable Planet or when already very close to it)

 

[EDanaII]

Try and get your angle of approach between 35º and 45º (using the planetary HUD), and try to get your target to around 100Km at the point you enter glide, which is indicated on the HUD by the 'Drop' mark. You will stay in glide, and can steer your ship but you cannot alter the speed which is 2,500 m/s, until you are around 6 or 7 km above the planet at which point you drop out to normal flight.

Upon seeing this thread, the above advice is exactly what I was gonna give. It will get you exactly where you need to be.

 

[Siobhan]

I just watched some of the vids that Ashnak linked.
All I can say is that those buckyballers are beyond insane!

 

[777Driver]

Suprsised I don't have that many uploaded vids of landing on planets :-/

@Op - Here's a vid of mine I found, 4mins to get from 34km up (111549ft) wouldn't say that is an excessive amount of time, was flying a shallow glide enjoying the scenery as opposed to a steep dive.

You can drop out of a glide right on top of the surface port if you so choose, drop the landing gear during the glide phase and time your docking request to be ready on glide exit. I prefer to enjoy a shallow cruise in.

[video=youtube;ybW9ZCWkqPY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybW9ZCWkqPY&list=UUXm79fS4PrZYTT_SxqSI7zQ&index=24[/video]

 

[UmbraRex]

I just watched some of the vids that Ashnak linked.
All I can say is that those buckyballers are beyond insane!

Yes.

It's loads of fun.

Join us...

*insert wicked evil grin here

 

[Alec Turner]

I just watched some of the vids that Ashnak linked.
All I can say is that those buckyballers are beyond insane!

Gentle landings are overrated!

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

[video=youtube_share;oli6iQLc_mI]https://youtu.be/oli6iQLc_mI[/video]

 

[Ism]

I'm certainly no expert on planetary landings, but I find that a 2:1 ratio (dx from target : altitude) puts me right on top of the base most of the time ~7-8km and I can ask for landing clearance immediately.
For example, 100Km from target : 50km altitude (make adjustments in glide).

 

[Mo Ronik]

Planetary landings are interesting. Took a bit of practice but I finally figured most of it out. Very first time I tried landing at a base I didn't know what the grey dashed circle thing meant. Initially I figured it was just underground so I bounced around where I saw it hoping something would open up. Nope, other side of the planet. Ok good, I got that part. Then after I could see the yellow circle thing.. yayy!!.. I was heading to it skimming the planet surface and dropped out of SC when I could just see the dots of the structures. Oh boy did that ever take a long time to arrive.. even using boost. I eventually got there and completed my mission. I knew there was a much better way than my mishaps so I searched for some videos and for the most part they all showed a similar approach with just a few variances. Personal preferences probably. So now I just scoot in SC till the base is just below me, point the nose down and watch all the flashy blinky stuff pop up in my view screen and when I'm close enough I just call for a landing request and taa daaaa!!! I later figured out that you approach the pad from the outside perimeter pointing in so I just zip around the outside rim of the pads till I get to the the one I gotta land on, roll my boat inward and drop on the circle. Then I think "did I do that better than the last time?". It's usually no but at least I have some conversation about it and the voices in my head are better than nothing....

 

[Lysette]

All great advice, thank you all for the quicke replies! I used to fly gliders for real, but never at a 45 degrees nose-down angle

Yeah, the term "glide" is ill-chosen in this case anyway - you land on planets without an atmosphere, so nothing there to actually glide on. See it more as a transition phase between supercruise and normal flight, where you descent at a pretty high rate and at a steep angle, before you are automatically slowed down to normal flight speeds. Glide phase fails, if you are going too steep or if your angle is too shallow. In that case you might want to reenter supercruise and retry your approach.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

Yeah, the term "glide" is ill-chosen in this case anyway - you land on planets without an atmosphere, so nothing there to actually glide on. See it more as a transition phase between supercruise and normal flight, where you descent at a pretty high rate and at a steep angle, before you are automatically slowed down to normal flight speeds. Glide phase fails, if you are going too steep or if your angle is too shallow. In that case you might want to reenter supercruise and retry your approach.

Hmm. Now that you mention it... perhaps "re-entry" might have been a better term but I'll leave that to those of greater wisdom than me.

 

[aRJay]

Hmm. Now that you mention it... perhaps "re-entry" might have been a better term but I'll leave that to those of greater wisdom than me.

Re-entry implies two things to me one doesn't apply at all and the other occasionally, the second is that you are returning which of course isn't always the case but the big fail is that it only applies to an atmosphere you are (re)entering.

I have no issue with the term glide as in this definition

Glide, verb, move with a smooth quiet continuous motion.

 

[Siobhan]

Yes.

It's loads of fun.

Join us...

*insert wicked evil grin here

I would love to, but I am nowhere near even a fraction good enough

 

[Ashnak]

I would love to, but I am nowhere near even a fraction good enough

That's just an excuse. Get used to the same three names turning up on the podium, have some fun battling out the middle of the table and learn a lot about your ship and what it can do.
Yes, your first runs will be abysmal. So were mine. And then you repeat it and realize that all those little tricks, which the racers will share freely (after the race, of course ) in combination will halve the time you need for the course. And you get shown some amazing sights - like landing on Miterrand Hollow.

At the moment (and until 3.3 is stabilised and we see what is possible and what not), it's pretty quiet. There are a couple of standing challenges, and of course you can always check the old races (and their threads) to see how you would fare.