Kick starter newbie here. How does this SCO thing work?

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Neilski said:
This is something I've long meant to properly try out. If you or anyone can recommend a tutorial post/video, I'd be grateful :)
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I'd say:
- practice in a fairly agile ship to start with (Asp or quicker turn rate). It can be done in a T-9 but it's certainly tougher and less effective.
- head straight at the planet at full (but non-SCO!) throttle until the timer hits 0:05
- dive so the planet is at the top of your field of view
- when the "gravity well" notice appears, cut throttle to 95% or so
- maintain a spiral trajectory so the planet stays roughly at the top of your field of view
If you get to within Mm rather than Ls of an orbital target and your timer is still 0:04 or above, straighten up and head for it at 95% throttle - you'll be below 1Mm/s before you hit the drop-out distance. If you're coming in faster than that, curve your approach closer to the planet to brake faster. If you're coming in too slowly (the gravity well notice disappears) you can return to 100% throttle and curve out a bit wider from the planet to reduce gravitational braking.

Pay attention to your engine noise. This is an excellent indicator of your speed relative to current gravitational conditions.

For surface landings, the vertical speed limit for orbital cruise is 200km/s. You can hit the orbital cruise line a lot faster than that safely if you're travelling at an oblique angle (over 1Mm/s is possible, just about) and you'll slow down a lot faster once within it. (But you'll travel much faster if orbiting parallel to the surface). If you're coming in too slowly, level off to take advantage of the speed boost, then dive sharply onto the target at the end. If you're coming in too fast, counter-intuitively you actually want to dive then pull up, as you'll shed speed a lot faster closer to the surface (just don't dive so far you can't pull up before the drop line!)

Once you've got the hang of approaching planets out on their own, a moon of a gas giant system gives lots of opportunities - you can start your initial braking a lot later, because you've got the option to skim either the gas giant or a different moon for more powerful braking later on.

You don't have to get it perfect, either, because the approach is just that much more effective. There's been at least one time where I've:
- dropped out of hyperspace at the star
- seen a player almost at the planet in supercruise ahead of me
- gone in for a fast approach, messed it up horribly, and crashed into the orbital cruise line
- waited out the 40s cooldown, returned to supercruise, finished the fast landing approach
- ...and still beat the other player to the destination by a clear margin

If you want to see the real pros do it - I'm competent at it but nowhere near their standard - some of the buckyball race videos show off what can be done.
 

aRJay

aRJay
Chrizaim said:
Specifically....

Is there a rule of thumb for when to turn it off so as not to overshoot?
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No. It is more complicated than a normal FSD.
Chrizaim said:
I've been on google and you tube, no luck so far.
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For short distances I will only use SCO if the time starts as days and then shut it off as soon as it is down to minutes. Exception being lifting off from a planet whee I use SCO until the HUD changes from orbital mode.

For longer trips I will shut it off when the time drops to below 20 seconds, if I am too far out and the time is still too long I will give it another blast.

I know the loop is supposed to be faster but I really don’t like doing it.
 

Neilski

Neilski
Ian Doncaster said:
For surface landings, the vertical speed limit for orbital cruise is 200km/s.
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Oooh, that's another thing I never knew, thanks. (I don't do a lot of surface stuff.)
Will give the spiral approach a go. I do now recall seeing one of the Buckyball videos recently with some funky approaches (including surfaces) where I was baffled that it didn't go wrong the way it does for me :)
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
As others have said so much of SCO approaches, like normal gravity braking, is about feel. Different planets have huge effects on how the final moments can go, it means everything is different. Even something like a High Metal Content planet and an Earth-Like make a huge difference to how intense the gravity wells are. For the recent race we did which was my first time using one in anger, I just had to try a few times and work out where the sweet point was for the ship I was flying. Because the ship and mass will have a huge effect.

Short distances are far harder to work out than longer with SCO, I was doing about 20-30% of the distance for 550Ls. And 60-70% of 7.5kLs, in a stock standard Cobra Mk. III.

Neilski said:
This is something I've long meant to properly try out. If you or anyone can recommend a tutorial post/video, I'd be grateful :)
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The pros you say :) Well allow me to show you, not my video :D

Source: https://youtu.be/NWFucEHRal4?si=l1sFa7uwALHfwga9&t=75


This is Shaye's winning run in the last race, I've timestamped the first SC and planetary entry, which everyone should watch as it's a thing of beauty. This race has a variety of SC length from 150LS up to a 75.kLs. One thing I have to make very clear though is don't try to copy Shaye, he is inhuman 😅

For normal gravity braking guides we have tutorials on the website, which also prove that the poorly named "loop of shame" is faster than a straight 6 second approach. Which includes

Source: https://youtu.be/wWSPWL7Atsg?si=bcP1Kb411c7UNy3R
 

Markov Chaney

M
deleteduser said:
Did you try... playng the game... ?
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Well, sure, except when I was building Outpost 1, I was ferrying metals for A While and even though the entry point was fairly consistently 130ls off the Refinery I needed, I still never managed to do SCO and SC exit twice the same way. On short trips you gotta be really precise, and mid-length trips are hard to judge until you have a lot of experience.

Long trips are easy because you just need to watch heat and make sure you don't go under 10 seconds or so.
 

Neilski

Neilski
Ozric said:
One thing I have to make very clear though is don't try to copy Shaye, he is inhuman 😅
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Ah yes indeed, the master's work! I've dipped my toe in Buckyball racing a tiny bit in the past and have seen some amazing things :)
Ozric said:
For normal gravity braking guides we have tutorials on the website, which also prove that the poorly named "loop of shame" is faster than a straight 6 second approach.
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Perfect - this sounds exactly what I need, ta! (So that I don't have to attempt to copy Shaye and end up smashing my controller into the screen :ROFLMAO:)
 

photomankc

photomankc
So I don't do much mathing of it.

Supper Short bursts under 50LS, drop it out as soon as you notice the acceleration really start. All you need to do is get out of the well.

Short, under 2000LS, drop when time dips below 7s. You can bottom the throttle and then pick back up when it rises above 7. You've saved a lot of time anyway.

Medium, under 5000LS, drop closer to 5s.

Long, more than 10KLS, drop closer to 2 or even 1s.


As I said I have not mathed it up but the 'feel' I get is that the longer you travel and the higher the peak speed you reach the harder the brake force becomes when you drop out. Short range is very touchy so you are better off to drop early and take a little longer to arrive than to blast past it and turn around. Also the SCO native ships seem to brake harder and sharper than the older ships with SCO.
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
It's an interesting question - as Ozric said, learning the nuances of SCO and when to turn it off have added a whole new dimension to Buckyball Racing which has been fantastic. I think it's pretty hard (if not impossible) to come up with a simple numerical answer because it all changes depending on the ship, the mass of the body in question, the distance out (i.e. what kind of speeds you've accelerated up to when you start to think about turning it off again), etc.

We've had this discussion in the Buckyball Racing Club's discord before and a general answer which is quite popular is to turn on orbit lines, fly off to the side of the orbital plane (so the rings around your target appear as ovals with some depth rather than just a flat line) and basically turn SCO off when "things start to rush towards you really quickly". I know that sounds horribly unscientific but honestly, for me at least it's definitely what works best and most reliably.

I'd also say that I will generally turn on SCO unless the distance from the drop-in point to my destination is less than a couple of hundred LS (and even then I'd probably be tempted to give it a quick burst) so, keeping that in mind, if you do turn SCO off too soon on a long trip and find yourself with several hundred LS or more to go then just turn it back on again (as soon as it's cooled down) and do another burst.

Finally, for anyone who wants to practice this stuff I can recommend a new race format we've tried a couple of times since SCO was released which is finding a system with loads of ringed bodies and, using the gap between the ring and the body as a race gate, run all rings in numerical order as a race course.

Here's a fairly raw video of me doing this in HIP 22460 as a demonstration. Apologies, it's sped up and there's also a lot of faffing around in the nav panel looking for my next target body but hopefully you get the idea.

Source: https://youtu.be/-5P6bNnuyZI
 
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