Question about landing on high G planets

Watchdog

Watchdog
My first true exploration expedition ended on a 2.10 G planet. I had never landed on such a high G world before. Did I make some kind of an obvious newbie mistake? I lost a few dozen systems worth of exploration data, including some virgin planets/moons, some data caches and a lot of time. I would like to avoid such a mistake next time.:S

I approached as usual, found some intersting looking spot and glided towards it. When I dropped off the Glide mode and steered towards the spot I had chosen my ASpX suddenly dropped like a stone and not even pulling back hard and boosting did anything.

The location of my very own, undoubtely very interestingly shaped little crater:

lrhjDbz.jpg
 

thundernuns

thundernuns
If you drop out of Glide at too steep an angle you can go very fast, so maybe drop out shallower is my best advice. Or do what I do and avoid high g's altogether ;)
 

[VR] optimal_909

[VR] optimal_909
If you really fell that suddenly,can it be that you accidentally turned off flight assist?

And above 1.5g, never turn your ship sideways or upside down unless for a very short time, because those thrusters can't fight the gravity. Steer sideways using yaw controls and never touch the vertical thrusters with the exception of upwards while taking off of course.
When hovering above the surface, touch down either by moving forward and pointing the nose slightly down, or -if you are only a couple of meters above ground- briefly turn off the flight assist.

When taking off, simply do it vertically, and only start flying forward if you are high above the ground. Then you may want to blast off vertically, but beware if you do so, because if you pitch too much the back, you may fall.

Most importantly: keep an eye on the hud, it shows you relative speed vertically, most of the hairy situations can be evaded by pointing the ship up and boosting away.

Once I landed on a 9.9 g planet, and I had no issues - apart of taking off, I was angled 45 degrees and had to boost constantly otherwise the 5A rated thrusters of the FDL couldn't cope. :)
 

Major Klutz

Major Klutz
Here's a video I made on Hi-G landings.
[video=youtube_share;0nErX1tFyC4]https://youtu.be/0nErX1tFyC4[/video]
9.77G is much less forgiving than 2.1G but the same principles apply.

Not sure exactly how you crashed but the most common mistakes are ... (follow links for specific examples at different points in the video.)

Lateral and Bow thrusters can't hold you up over about ~0.3G. So nose down or banking to the side more than a few degrees will cause you to drop.
Keep the ship level and use only rudder to turn.

Even your main and vertical thrusters can't hold you up over ~0.6G without flight assist. Turning FA off will cause you to drop like a rock. (even if you are actively countering with upward thrust)

Binary control of vertical (ventral) thrusters will lag flight assist which will cause you to drop more altitude than you gained.
When you thrust upward and then cut vertical thrust suddenly, FA takes a half second to begin compensating and then could take a few seconds more to slow you back down to zero.
If you're at low altitude already, the ground will probably stop you first. So don't touch the vertical thrusters on landing and on takeoff, don't let go of them until you have >3KM altitude.

It takes much longer to slow down than it did to speed up ...

Using an analog control for your vertical thrust also helps significantly.
 
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Kenneth McGrew

Kenneth McGrew
Watchdog said:
My first true exploration expedition ended on a 2.10 G planet. I had never landed on such a high G world before. Did I make some kind of an obvious newbie mistake? I lost a few dozen systems worth of exploration data, including some virgin planets/moons, some data caches and a lot of time. I would like to avoid such a mistake next time.:S

I approached as usual, found some intersting looking spot and glided towards it. When I dropped off the Glide mode and steered towards the spot I had chosen my ASpX suddenly dropped like a stone and not even pulling back hard and boosting did anything.

The location of my very own, undoubtely very interestingly shaped little crater:

http://i.imgur.com/lrhjDbz.jpg
Click to expand...

just land "like a plane" ( in terms of angle and approach to ground - not the speed!!), this planet is over 4G if I recall correctly, and no shields - no damage :)

I also have tested this method shield-less on a 9.7?G arhnar something or other close to the bubble

its simple

[video=vimeo;203971424]https://vimeo.com/203971424[/video]
 

clivewil

clivewil
here's something i'd like to know:

one of the tip-off missions directed me to a crashed ship on a 3g planet. i was hovering near it in an Anaconda, probably about 200m up, and my ship was perfectly still and level, no control inputs, and i was looking for something in the data panels. suddenly the ship just dropped like a rock and rolled sideways down the hill.

after righting it and trying to climb, thrusters didn't have any effect at all -until about (30 seconds, guessing?) later when they began to behave normally again. i raised the ship up again and left it hovering, and about 30 sec? later she suddenly dropped and fell again. same deal with the thrusters on the ground, they took a while again before they came back online. repeat 2 more times before i landed properly and let my shields recharge.

it was as if the thrusters ran off batteries that went flat, and then needed to recharge again, before happily going flat again

i've been on many high-G worlds in different ships, including this very Anaconda* and never had this happen or anything like it. great if it never happens again.

* the only difference this time was she had dirty drive 5 on her, the other times she had no thruster mod. whatever difference that makes.
 
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Qohen Leth

Qohen Leth
The thrusters are always online, but the higher the G, the longer they take to slow down the fall, even the force, and push the ship back up; this is perfectly normal. As for the drop, it cannot happen by itself unless you accidentally hit FA Off or tab the window out of focus (not sure it disables the keyboard input, but if you use a joystick button/throttle, that will most likely disable the input).

That, or a bug.

Make sure you don't have a key binding acting on both the menus navigation and the ship controls.
 
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Major Klutz

Major Klutz
clivewil said:
here's something i'd like to know: ...

... suddenly the ship just dropped like a rock and rolled sideways down the hill.
Click to expand...
Were your thrusters damaged at all? 99% or less?
Any damage to internal modules will cause them to sometimes intermittently fail or function with less power.
I've only experienced this with my FSD but it would go offline intermittently and then take some time (30 seconds?) to come back online.

Any chance voice attack or some accidental keypress caused a down thrust? Even a very brief tap on the downward thrusters would cause what you described.
Once on the ground it takes time for the thrusters to overcome the high G and lift off.

That's all I can think of. Nothing like that has ever happened to me on countless high G landings.
 
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clivewil

clivewil
Major Klutz said:
Were your thrusters damaged at all? 99% or less?
Any damage to internal modules will cause them to sometimes intermittently fail or function with less power.
I've only experienced this with my FSD but it would go offline intermittently and then take some time (30 seconds?) to come back online.
Click to expand...
nothing weird with the ship, no damage, and also my thrusters and throttle are controlled by keys (so it's not a joy deadzone issue either) and almost impossible to nudge if you're taking great care not to - which is why i'm 100% certain it was not done by me, on the second time around i kept my hands away from the PC, i was nowhere near it when it dropped.

no crossed or double bindings, no voice attack, nothing that could interfere with the ship in any way

Nothing like that has ever happened to me on countless high G landings.
Click to expand...
until then i'd never had it happen before either, or since

or a bug.
Click to expand...
it must be.
 
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mpfj

mpfj
Watchdog said:
My first true exploration expedition ended on a 2.10 G planet. ... I lost a few dozen systems worth of exploration data, including some virgin planets/moons, some data caches and a lot of time.
Click to expand...

Try 10KLY from Beagle Point ... :eek:

Currently on attempt #2 ... [yesnod]
 

Watchdog

Watchdog
mpfj said:
Try 10KLY from Beagle Point ... :eek:

Currently on attempt #2 ... [yesnod]
Click to expand...

I have been playing for like two weeks. I need more experience before I can make a journey like that. The 50 or so systems I explored were a lot for me.

Besides, I think that is literally the other side of the galaxy from me. I started like 20k Ly from Colonia.
 
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