IS there some video or guide on how landing on a planet works? Decided to play the horizons version from now on, and the first mission I did was immediately relaid from a "normal station" to a planetary station, so IU have to land there or risk a fine, but I never landed on a planet before and since my docking makes me crash 10% of the time, I fear the worst... So hoped there was a training job, but could not find it... So please help me ?
-
Greetings Commander, want a more instant approach to your questions and need for help? Check out the Galactic Academy Discord server!
Feel free to join the Galactic Academy Discord server by clicking here!
Newcomer / Intro Landing on planet guide?
- Thread starter pipo zelvelder
- Start date
Approach the planet at super cruise with your landing site selected as your target. When you get close enough to the planet's surface you'll get a pitch ladder showing you your angle in relation to the planet's horizon. Watch your distance to the facility and when you judge you're close enough, drop out of super cruise and fly to your landing site as normal. You'll need to experiment with this distance yourself. But in order to avoid spending eternity flying to the station after you drop out of super cruise, you'll have to cruise up until you're almost on top of it. Same 7.5k distance for asking landing permission applies. If you're landing at a facility with landing pads the final approach is the same as docking in a space station. If you're landing in the wilderness it's even easier as you don't have to aim at a particular place on the ground. Just pick a suitably level spot and hover over it. Then apply downward thrust and when you get low enough your scanner will change to show your position relative to the ground. It even has an elevation map. You'll also see a symbol on your HUD indicating if you're level or not. It will change to blue when your angle is OK. Then just thrust down until touchdown.
Hope that helps.
Hope that helps.
Last edited:
I think the best place to start are the official guides.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2uYM2ykS1I&list=PL7glm5rbPHKx8MWl-oKkxLvEcAmumMVtw
![[VR] Zakk](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/64/64104.jpg?1587234982){kind=avatar}
A word of advice - watch the gravity value at the bottom of your pitch ladder display. As long as it's below 1G (it usually is), landing is fairly easy. But I did my first high-g landing yesterday, and almost destroyed my ship. I was heading towards the station at full speed, approaching it a steep angle, hitting the brakes last minute as I usually do. A few seconds later, I was bouncing back after a heavy impact on the landing pad, wondering what the hell just had happened. I was lucky, just some hull damage and a small fine, but that could have ended ugly.
Also, when you drop out of SC at a shallow angle, you enter a glide mode. That's pretty fast, but the ship will hardly respond to any inputs. The safest way to leave the glide mode seems to be to pitch the nose upwards. The thrusters will then come to life, and you can fly normally to the ground station.
I am yet to figure out how to glide effectively, so I usually drop out of glide asap. I prefer to approach stations at a 90 degree angle anyway.
Also, when you drop out of SC at a shallow angle, you enter a glide mode. That's pretty fast, but the ship will hardly respond to any inputs. The safest way to leave the glide mode seems to be to pitch the nose upwards. The thrusters will then come to life, and you can fly normally to the ground station.
I am yet to figure out how to glide effectively, so I usually drop out of glide asap. I prefer to approach stations at a 90 degree angle anyway.
If you want to glide effectively, keep your angle of descent around 30-40 degrees and aim a few hundred meters above the base. You will exit the glide about 5km away, so you can ask clearance right away and go for landing. And generally, the higher the Gs, the shallower your approach should be.
In big ships especially and/or if you have D-rated thrusters, you should never exceed the vertical speed of three bars on the variometer. Also don't extend your landing gear too soon. If you screw up the approach and end up unable to slow the descent, you can always point up and boost to safety. Which you can't do with the landing gear down.
Something else not to do: Yesterday I super cruised directly over the facility, and did a 90 degree dive at it. When I thought I was close enough I dropped out of super cruise but it doesn't happen instantly, it takes some time. So the ground just kept coming at me at an alarming rate. I was 100% sure I was going to end up a wet stain on the ground. I think I was less than a second away from impact when I finally dropped from super cruise, only slightly above the facility. Only blind luck saved me. I'm never going to be that dumb again.
Thanx all! I did some landings yesterday and everything was allright! Got a few interdictions though, as landing seems to take more time, but nothing too big, so no problem. Thanx again!
The good thing about taking missions leading to planets is that you can't be interdicted in Orbital cruise. Once you are beyond that yellow horizon line, you're safe, so you get rid of those annoying last second interdictions when approaching the station, for example.
they can still follow you to the base sometimes, but if you do the approach right, you'll emerge out of glide within 5 kilometers from the base. And they have big guns.
Landing on Planets - A primer
My two cents:
I think most people each do it a little different and in their own way but: Initially the approach is much like approaching a station BUT the steps are a little different: Slow down about 20 seconds out instead of 7. It takes a little practice but watch the speed/distance scale to your left as you approach the planet. You want your speed down into the upper blue zone right before your ship hits the dark blue OC line around the planet, with direct line-of-sight to your target. You want to cross that line with your speed in the upper blue zone and your angle of attack around 40-50 degrees relative to the planet's surface. When you cross the blue OC line the Orbital Cruise scale will appear in the right side of the HUD. If the center of the HUD "reds out" then your angle of attack is probably too steep. Pull up. It is OK to overshoot in OC mode but not something you want to make a habit of. Continue to descend, aiming your ship just barely "below" your target. As you descend your angle of attack will naturally get shallower as the round surface of the planet interacts with your straight path of descent.
As you descend in Orbital Cruise mode, depending on gravity (bottom-right in HUD) you may want to zero the throttle, or not, but there is no longer any "speed" indicator and if you cross the yellow "SURF" line going too fast you will get booted out of OC (with structural damage), get no "glide" mode and will have to boost the remaining 100 kilometers or so to your target. Sucks.
As you descend in OC mode your altitude pip will drop down the HUD until it reaches the "SURF" line. When this happens the ship will seem to "freeze" as it exits Orbital Cruise mode and (hopefully) enters terrestrial GLIDE mode. This is to me the longest transition in the game. When the game finally un-freezes you will hopefully be in GLIDE mode descending toward your target at a pretty good clip. You will probably want to cut your throttle at this point. GLIDE mode usually ends anywhere from about 30 to 15 kilometers from the target but with practice I have gotten it down to under 6 kilometers. Sort of scary-fast approach, though. Make sure your docking computer is turned OFF (the flight-controller will make fun of you), cut (or increase) throttle to about 50% and request docking.
Note that in terrestrial flight mode the ship will tend to "auto-level" i.e.: if you point the ship at the ground and let go the stick, the ship will tend to pull up and level out. Also, remember gravity: If you point a ship at the ground and boost, you may become a tent-stake.
My two cents:
I think most people each do it a little different and in their own way but: Initially the approach is much like approaching a station BUT the steps are a little different: Slow down about 20 seconds out instead of 7. It takes a little practice but watch the speed/distance scale to your left as you approach the planet. You want your speed down into the upper blue zone right before your ship hits the dark blue OC line around the planet, with direct line-of-sight to your target. You want to cross that line with your speed in the upper blue zone and your angle of attack around 40-50 degrees relative to the planet's surface. When you cross the blue OC line the Orbital Cruise scale will appear in the right side of the HUD. If the center of the HUD "reds out" then your angle of attack is probably too steep. Pull up. It is OK to overshoot in OC mode but not something you want to make a habit of. Continue to descend, aiming your ship just barely "below" your target. As you descend your angle of attack will naturally get shallower as the round surface of the planet interacts with your straight path of descent.
As you descend in Orbital Cruise mode, depending on gravity (bottom-right in HUD) you may want to zero the throttle, or not, but there is no longer any "speed" indicator and if you cross the yellow "SURF" line going too fast you will get booted out of OC (with structural damage), get no "glide" mode and will have to boost the remaining 100 kilometers or so to your target. Sucks.
As you descend in OC mode your altitude pip will drop down the HUD until it reaches the "SURF" line. When this happens the ship will seem to "freeze" as it exits Orbital Cruise mode and (hopefully) enters terrestrial GLIDE mode. This is to me the longest transition in the game. When the game finally un-freezes you will hopefully be in GLIDE mode descending toward your target at a pretty good clip. You will probably want to cut your throttle at this point. GLIDE mode usually ends anywhere from about 30 to 15 kilometers from the target but with practice I have gotten it down to under 6 kilometers. Sort of scary-fast approach, though. Make sure your docking computer is turned OFF (the flight-controller will make fun of you), cut (or increase) throttle to about 50% and request docking.
Note that in terrestrial flight mode the ship will tend to "auto-level" i.e.: if you point the ship at the ground and let go the stick, the ship will tend to pull up and level out. Also, remember gravity: If you point a ship at the ground and boost, you may become a tent-stake.
Last edited: