Overshooting while Approaching Planets and Stations

[IndigoWyrd]

Ever see that episode of Star Trek where they slingshot around a star to break warp 10 and travel backwards in time?

Gravity, it's not just a downer, it's the law.

 

[Darkfyre99]

WOW - what a behemoth of a discussion may arise after such a simple question... I'm sorry that I could have not come back earlier - real life, you know?

First of all I would like to mention that I'm not that ignorant as some responders may think. Indeed I'm not approaching the station at full throttle and then complaining about missing it by ten lightyears. Likewise I'm not rushing my car into the garage...

The core of my question was adressed in some of the responses: Although I always keep my throttle in the middle or even the (s)lower third of the blue zone and hold a distance of around 7 to 9 seconds to the station and regularly use my thrusters with the "R"-key, very often a hefty acceleration is initiated by itself without any chance to foresee or to avoid. I have no idea what's behind this peculiar behaviour.

Mr. Bombastic provided the relevant DevTeam quote above y our post: it's an audio cue mismatch. The game engine sees you're going, say, 0.7c, while the mass shadow of the planet you're just entered allows for an ideal[SUB]1[/SUB] speed of 0.2c. Since your current speed is higher than your ideal speed, the game engine produces the sound of your engines throttled at full.

Personally, my own headcanon assumes that even in normal space, the performance of our thrusters are enhanced by the FSD. When I hear the engine whine as I thread the needle during a mass shadow braking maneuver, I don't interpret it as my engines throttling up. I interpret it as my FSD overloading. Unfortunately, our FSDs no longer take damage while performing such a maneuver.[woah]

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¹AKA "the blue zone," AKA the speed of maximum maneuverability

 

[Weediot]

Hi! Overshooting is not really a problem for me I can usually "swing" in to a planets gravitational pull and pull into the stations opening from super cruise. As I'm sure your well aware of a station port is usually facing planet side. And my maneuvers would not be possible without a lil overshooting. I usually approach a planet from the top or bottom of its gravitational plane at usually high speed and let it's gravity slow me down. Plus it's amazing to get a view of the planet as I skim by. My days of smuggling has taught me well. While ships control differently at different speeds with different load outs you can usually count on gravity of a planet to pull your ship to ideal speeds. This doesn't mean your you should approach at unreasonable speeds.. i usually only let my speeds hover around two ticks above my throttle and always with the blue range of maneuverability.

 

[Synesis]

(...) metrically challenged (...)

Gave me a good laugh. Ergo +rep

 

[rrobes]

May be FD is forced to use shortcuts to create the environment due to the limitations on personnel, program, network and client hardware/software and maybe to "enhance" play.

There is general agreement that NPC behavior is full of "tricks" to give them some survivability (I know some players may say "Oh, no NPC's are overpowered", they aren't, but that is another discussion).

Posted earlier on this thread in:re one of these "shortcuts", speed change on approach to USS, behavior easily duplicated. So we do have mechanics that perhaps make it "harder" to reach a specific location. Is this arbitrary/on purpose? I would find it hard to believe it was inadvertent.

These "tricks" are not the only ones out there.

PS

Nav points behave the same way as USS, you can slow down by re-targeting another object.