Landing on Planets Sucks - because it doesn't work.

[Lightspeed]

The planet has an OUTPOST. The one I was actually trying to land on. It drops me out of jump, does the glide thing then drops out of glide and just moves extremely slowly to the target, never reaching it and never letting me land. I've tried this on like 5 different planets. Same crap.

By extremely slowly, you do realize that after glide you end up with ordinary "standard" progress using thrusters (no supercruise speed) so yes, it could seem very slow.

Increase your speed and boost, to see what speed you get up to as a test. A few hundred kph can seem very slow on the surface of a planet.

If you come out of glide too far from the outpost, it will seem like an eternity trying to get to it.

Ideally, you should set the outpost up in your sights so that you descend at about 30 degrees, that way you should drop out of Glide within about 7 km of the station and able to hail it for landing permission. Fly as normal to the outpost.

 

[Tin Actual]

Once you've completed your glide, what's the time / distance from you to the outpost? A bad glide can still leave you 3-4 mins out, in which case you should go full power to engines and boost constant, it'll cut the time down a lot.

Yup. Check the altimeter on the right hand side of the screen.

 

[Argus Leadhead]

Maybe just not doing it right?

I don't know how you're doing it, but usually I gradually drop my altitude in orbital cruise until I'm just above the limit to drop into glide. Keep the nose aimed at 0° or up to +5° to keep this altitude. Once my target is between -45° and -35° on the read out, I aim straight for it and drop into glide. If I do it right, glide finishes at 4-6km from the target.

 

[ROSS-128]

Yeah, I usually stay in orbital cruise until I'm about 150km-100km from the target, then aim just above the target indicator as I glide the rest of the way. That usually drops me pretty close.

Hadn't occurred to me that he might just have no clue about how to do an approach and had been dropping himself millions of meters away, I figured it would have been pretty obvious you want to cruise as close as you can manage before dropping...

 

[Slopey]

@OP - your initial message was flagged for approval, as you're a new poster.

Given your "lovely" follow up, that was probably a good thing. I have approved the initial post and deleted your unnecessary reply. Please treat everyone on these forums respectfully, otherwise, you'll recieve and infraction in-line with the forum rules.

 

[Noogillim]

What distance are you from the surface.

If your poorly control the glide you drop out quite a way from the planet.

At normal thrust speed depending on the distance to the surface it can take quite a while.

as others have suggested 4 pips to thrusters and boost.

What ship are you flying a slow one in a low g world will take longer a big fat space cow in a high g world won't take long!

 

[SirDavros]

Just going to take your post at face value, because it does work, if you do it right.

 

[DutchKnight]

Actually, it takes a bit of learning, watch the gauges and don't drop down too steep.
A) approach the planet and find the station you want to get to, don't go down yet until it is on the same side you are on.
B) drop down gradually (never more than 25 degrees down) keep the nose pointed to the station you want to dock at, I use a down bubble of around 15 degrees.
C) Once you reach below a certain level (not sure exactly how high, 5km ?) the Glide will kick in, this will bring you nice and close to the finish. (Glide terminate early if you are overshooting your target or are going down too steep.)
D) use normal thrusters to get close enough to the station to hail it for lading permit - watch your altitude.

I hit the ground a few times a bit hard (gravity) but never crashed/killed so far. It is actually fun to do and change of scenery from the orbniting stations.

Keep trying! Cheers! --- DK

 

[DutchKnight]

Maybe if someone hadn't deleted my original post, there would be more information. Drop out of glide, stuck in the air, can't even thrust down to the surface. Never make contact w/the outpost that's a few meters away.

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W T F do you mean "frawd"?

LOL, "Frawd" is his handle

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Are you getting an "emergency drop - too close" message?

Other things you want to check: make sure you have Horizons, you need that to land on planets. Also make sure that when you launch the game, you're launching Horizons. It's possible to launch just the base game even if you have Horizons (this is mostly used to unstick people who get stranded on a planet due to a bug or something), and obviously that would cause problems with landing.

Also a forum tip: it's easier to get good advice if you chill out and explain your problem calmly. If you just come barging in here raging and frothing at the mouth, you're more likely to just get your thread locked.

HORIZON's LOL, Yes, I tried Landing that once or twice on a planet too BEFORE I bought HORIZON's, I did not realize you had to buy it that before you could land on planets - it just will never let you.

 

[Cmdr Zach]

Don't really feel inclined to help the OP with the obvious blame slinging post, but a LOT of people couldn't land on planets because they defaulted to launch Elite Dangerous from the game launcher instead of horizons......

 

[Atebits]

Alright, anger is healthy when nothing makes sense. Moving on to actually making some sense out of what you're saying...

For starters:
a. If you are NOT flying with an Advanced Discovery Scanner you'll want to fly a bit out from the star you jumped into the system by. Once out a bit, turn around a look at the star. You should see a Nav Beacon floating around that.
b. Nav Beacons are there to help pilots gain systems' information without the need for a Discovery Scanner.
c. To approach a Nav Beacon target it by aiming your ship at it and pressing T
d. Use the the Throttle on the right side of your dashboard such that the moving 'throttle up' and 'throttle down' line turns blue. If you've changed your HUD colors this could be different. In any case, it should be a distinct color that appears at fairly low throttle speeds.
e. With the Nav Beacon targeted and Throttle in the blue move towards the nav beacon. Throttle down if you think you're going to fly past it.
f. As you get closer two slider bars appear on the left side of your HUD. One says Distance, the other Speed. You want to get the moving vertical bars on these two move left parallel with each other at a slow regular speed. Once they match the Blue area of each on their left most side you'll get a message to drop out of supercruise. Otherwise you'll get a " slow down " message. Sometimes getting this right takes a few attempts.
g. Once you've dropped into the area of the Nav Beacn you target it again and fly up to it. This SHOULD provide you with all of the systems information.
- if nothing happens then that nav beacon is bugged.
1. Jump out of the system and back in... sometimes this updates your map of the system as though you Scanned the Nav Beacon even though it did not say so.
2. If it still doesn't work you have run into a bug and you need to go find a ADS

Starters, Part II:
Make sure you have Horizons turned on. If you're using Steam log out of the game completely, then right click on your Installed games and click "Play". You'll then be given the option to log in using Horizons. Make sure you chose 64 bit if your computer uses that.

Starters, Part II: Landing
That video is too much information all at once.

Just fly toward a planet until it is most of your screen. Do so SLOWLY. You can interpret "slowly" however you want.
a. I find it best if you're uncertain about how fast you're coming up on some planet, for whatever reason, to aim to the side of while Throttling down.
b. This way you can have your momentum absorbed by its gravity well and still overshoot it. By doing this you slow down from ultra fast speeds, but can still turn sharply if you're in a very large ship.
c. After this you should be around 1 to 5 Ls from the planet.
d. Now just take it easy and check your Navigational Computer by pressing 1 on your keyboard and then D to arrow over into the local-system data. Find the base you want and lock target.
e. Now orbit the planet without getting inside that blue shell or stay at the outer most edge.
f. Find the port you're trying to land at.
g. angle toward it such that you have a nice slow and not steep drop
h. in most cases these are low g worlds. Just let the ship get into Glide.
i. to get into glide, approach slowly, and make sure you don't see any wall of text-like stuff going across the middle of your screen in that area that changes showing your angle of approach. If the angle is too sharp this wall of text-like imagery appears and the HUD makes noises at you when you nose toward it. Don't nose toward it. Stay above that.
j. at this point your ship will enter into Glide at 35 km or so.
k. just go slow and let the ship enter Glide.
l. once in Glide let it seemingly nose dive at the planet. It will stop between 7 and 4 kilometers above the planet's surface in most circumstances.
m. Have a standard docking computer if you don't.
n. either way, request to dock and head over to the pad indicated by the little targeting sphere on the top left of your dashboard HUD


NOTE:
You can't land or even see where you can land without having your landing gear out. Get to within 4 km of the surface and drop your landing gear to see what's below you.

Leaving the Planet:
a. launch from the pad the same as you would everywhere else in the game
b. get some altitude. About 2km is good
c. angle up to 90 degrees
d. make sure you have no targets or systems locked on
e. now fly straight 'up' until the planet's mass isn't bothering you: mass lock (right side of hud in a square tick box)
f. hit J to get back into supercruise
g. you'll usually be told to align to vector... if you're ship is stupid it will start overheating rapidly at this point. Quickly turn off J again if you can't find your Escape Vector
- repeat all of G until you've gotten out of orbit
- this part can be a bit stupid so just shift your nose around until you find the Escape Vector
- make sure you don't have your next destination targeted during this process unless you can clearly see it in the direction your heading

 

[Ren Garris]

Don't really feel inclined to help the OP with the obvious blame slinging post, but a LOT of people couldn't land on planets because they defaulted to launch Elite Dangerous from the game launcher instead of horizons......

And heres the answer.

I made that mistake once after an update.
OP, make sure you are launching in horizons. If not, you'll never land. Which kind of sounds like what you are describing.

 

[Sardu]

Landing is easy. If you want it any easier go play NMS and "Press Square to land"

 

[Phord Prefect]

Landing is easy. If you want it any easier go play NMS and "Press Square to land"

Wtb that button. More smokebreaks!

Does that auto docker thingy work? Have yet to give it a go. Never enuff internals

 

[koop26]

I used to glide in a bit too far from stations but that's about the worst of it.

It does sound like he's smacking into the gravity well too quickly and spinning out hundreds of km above the surface. Or not launching Horizons and flying into a body exclusion zone while flying "towards" the outpost.

To me it seems you start your glide between 40km and 60km's and as long as you're at a 45 degree angle with the nose pointing at the outpost you're gonna stop the glide within 7km and then dock away.

 

[TigerTen]

One must learn too FLY, willing to help. Just ask.

 

[AndrewJ71]

I think I know what the problem is. Because I'm quite new to the game and had the exact same problem the first time I tried to go to a base.

I'm guessing the base location is showing up as a dotted circle (and you can't actually see the physical base). A dotted circle means it's behind the planet - a solid circle means it's in front of the planet. So yes... the first time I tried to fly to a planetary base, I was trying to fly through the planet to get to it. Oops. (You would have needed to go back up into Orbit and fly around to the side of the planet the base is on. But in future - if it's a dotted circle as you are approaching the planet, shoot around to the other side before trying to land).

 

[Attila22]

[Redacted]

 

[koop26]

I think I know what the problem is. Because I'm quite new to the game and had the exact same problem the first time I tried to go to a base.

I'm guessing the base location is showing up as a dotted circle (and you can't actually see the physical base). A dotted circle means it's behind the planet - a solid circle means it's in front of the planet. So yes... the first time I tried to fly to a planetary base, I was trying to fly through the planet to get to it. Oops. (You would have needed to go back up into Orbit and fly around to the side of the planet the base is on. But in future - if it's a dotted circle as you are approaching the planet, shoot around to the other side before trying to land).

Can't believe I didn't think of that. good observation.

 

[Boff'in]

The planet has an OUTPOST. The one I was actually trying to land on. It drops me out of jump, does the glide thing then drops out of glide and just moves extremely slowly to the target, never reaching it and never letting me land. I've tried this on like 5 different planets. Same crap.

IGNORE THE JIBBER CHATTER.

As two kind people have pointed out.

If you aren't approaching the planet at all, you aren't running horizons.
You can launch different version of the game, from the launcher.

You might not "own" horizons, and assume it was a free season of updates. Sadly not. Some features trickle down to the base game, but not all.
A quick way is well, reporting which version of the game when it's booted up.

In the Ship module factilities you can physically check to see if you have a landing navigational module installed in your ship.

As for going to unexplored systems, and can't find the planet. Yeah, I got caught out by that.
Buy the information in the galaxy map, or
Always carry a discovery scanner - was the rule that I heard on the forums.
It's not described anyway in the "in-game" literature.

So I'll give you points for not knowing, as it's never explained. It's something you sort of figured out or got told.

In 2.1, they gave the ability to drop out at the nav-beacon and scan.
Again news we picked up along the way, but isn't in the in-game literature.