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Newcomer / Intro Planetary Landings
- Thread starter hawknerd
- Start date
In supercruise/glide? You don't.
Just end the glide (or crash out of it or supercruise) close enough and fly there.
Pull up (the glide mode will terminate when you hit 0 degrees of pitch).
Otherwise the glide will end about 7km above ground automatically.
Over time, you will get better at judging distance and knowing where to aim, so my advice is... just do it a hundred times. Just like landing or any other piloting skill.
Yeah, you want to aim to have one of the coordinates pretty much spot on and then be travelling in the right direction to get the other coordinate right. pitch down around 45° when it's within something like 10° of where it needs to be (obviously that varies depending on the size of the planet). Basically picture the place you want to be ahead of you down on the planet and pitch down at the right moment to glide beautifully down towards it.
I was always a bit iffy about pitching down in Glide. I know it would be fine, but there's something in my stomach that prefers being paralell with the ground.
For any newbies (like me) starting to work out planetary landings I spent a while watching videos so I got used to the new relevant hud layout as well as best practice before actually trying it myself - I watched the videos over and over. This meant that when I tried it for real I had some "borrowed" experience and was able to make faster progress. I started with base landings and then moved on to co-ordinate specific landings (which I am still trying to work out now). But videos are very very useful. They give you a sense of familiarity which helps give you confidence and when you do it the real thing is not such a shock.
Its a shame there is no simulator for planetary landings as it would be very useful.
Its a shame there is no simulator for planetary landings as it would be very useful.
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I tend to use a very crude method for this, I head on 0 or 90 or 180 or 270 degrees until I am at the right latitude or longitude, throttling right back as I get close then turn 90 degrees to run down the other coordinate again slowing down as I approach then descend as near vertically as possible so as not to get too far away.
Coordinate landing can be done more elegantly than that but I am lazy so haven't put in the practice to get the technique down.
I find it helps not to touch the controls whilst in glide, too much movement tends to end the glide early.
Yes, just what I was about to write. I do the same thing - taking one coordinate at a time.
the whole game is your simulator.
to avoid loss just test with an unladen free sidewinder. devs are idle enough as is, a shame would be wasting their little precious development time on something that is already there.
educating yourself with third parties first and then trying yourself is fine (hands on experimenting is another type of fun, also fine), but as long as you have enough for rebuy and aren't risking some important cargo/data/mission you shouldn't really worry too much about blowing up either.
Excellent help and diagram!! Just landed at 00.00 to practice it all. It makes sense now. But I still need a lot more practice.What I recommend initially is to take a look this diagram for reference.
So suppose your current latitude (the first number on the HUD) is quite a bit higher than where you're trying to get to and the longitude (second number) is just a little bit too low. From that diagram you need the LAT to go down (a lot) and the LON to go up (a bit) - so you want a heading somewhere in the region between 135° and 180°. It's really tricky to get your head around at first but comes with practice. I learned during a week long Buckyball Race which required landing at specific coordinates on a bunch of different planets. Actually, you can do it without the diagram just as easily really. Pay attention to the direction in which the numbers are changing as you approach the planet. If the 1st number's changing in the wrong direction (e.g. going up when you want it to go down) then change your North/South direction (i.e. if you're heading North then head South and vice versa) and if the 2nd number's going in the wrong direction then change your East/West direction. Often easier to sort one value out first and then the other.
I think one thing that would help A LOT, especially the newcomers, would be if there was a simple overlay over the planet (something like DSS but less intrusive and persistent, please.
). Even if it just highlighted the poles and an equator, it would be awesome and the whole orientation and coordinate hunting would be much simpler.Then again, this way it's probably more fun, albeit frustrating if you need to do it a lot.
Personally, when I was learning it back in a day, I just did a couple of tip-off missions and by a third one I was a pro.
Honestly, I haven't seen one in a while, so I'm not sure how frequent they are, now, but essentially, at random you would receive an email (through the comms panel) with the planet and coordinates. If you went there, there was usually a crashed probe or a ship that you could scan and it gave you a little bit of story and some data that you could sell for a couple thousand credits. Nothing major, but it was nice to do them from time to time.
I found a planet with two bases and have been flying between them all day going in and out of SC so I was approaching the planet anew each time. I also used manual docking (switched DC off) for the practice. I have learned a lot and also understand the co-ordinate landing a lot better even if it still takes me a while. I need more practice really but I think I am going to move on and get on with my adventures. I can land on a planet now and can deploy my SRV. So now I need to go and get materials.
Honestly, I've been trying to land on a planet for 2 weeks and still can't. I dont see a gravity indicator in my ship either. They made this WAY harder than it has to be. I get nothing but "Dropping" no matter how slow I approach. As a new player, this is turning me off to what seemed to be a great space sim. There is no warning Im going too fast, no warning Im going to slow...just immediately "Dropping". 6 second ETA, 8, 12 it doesnt matter. Please redesign this process. Are you trying to drive away new players?
Sounds like you do not have Horizons. Horizons is needed to land on planets. If you have Horizons have you got the Planetary Approach Suite installed in one of your optional modules slots? I can't imagine anyone selling this module but hey, it takes all sorts.
BTW - HumbleBundle have Horizons DLC available for £4.99 at the moment (for another 22 hours now):
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