The Planetary landing and planetside missions discussion Thread

Dr Roly · Apr 5, 2015

Rep to OP for some great ideas. Personally, I'd be happy with enough complexity to make you have to think about atmospheric entry, aerobatics and landing without making it sim-heavy. How do you stimulate something 1300yrs in the future with the power output of a small star and the aerodynamics of an apartment block? Too easy to get bogged down in details and loose focus.

I'll be interested to see how FD deals with flight speed. ED ships "fly" at high subsonic/low supersonic speed (as measured on Earth). It would take hours to get anywhere. However, letting players supercruise at atmospheric level opens up a whole new can of worms.

TheMarshall · Apr 5, 2015

Dr Roly said:
...with the power output of a small star and the aerodynamics of an apartment block

Hahaha

......and stolen, stored away for future use by me.

Varrag · Apr 5, 2015

Dr Roly said:
How do you stimulate something 1300yrs in the future with the power output of a small star and the aerodynamics of an apartment block?

Good point

Although, it is worth noting that the power output of ships in ED is far from a small star. In fact, it seems that the modern jet engines produce more power than most (all?) power plants in ED: for example, single GE90 engine (Boeing 777) delivers 75 MW - let alone nuclear reactors on modern aircraft carriers and submarines.

777Driver · Apr 5, 2015

Varrag said:
Good point

Although, it is worth noting that the power output of ships in ED is far from a small star. In fact, it seems that the modern jet engines produce more power than most (all?) power plants in ED: for example, single GE90 engine (Boeing 777) delivers 75 MW - let alone nuclear reactors on modern aircraft carriers and submarines.

The GE90-115B is an absolute beast

lolanon · Apr 5, 2015

It will be a minigame like interdiction at most.

LKx · Apr 5, 2015

Planetary landing will be sold like an expansion, so i don't think it'll be harder that docking, at least for easier earthlike planets. Maybe sonething harder for more "exotic" planets

ShadowWolf Kell · Apr 5, 2015

If they made it realistic, spins would be a very serious problem for ED ships. Flight Assist will probably be disabled like in SC. I'm honestly expecting ED's version of atmospheric flight to be pretty arcadish.

killminster · Apr 5, 2015

I'm hoping that atmospheric pressure has an integral role in game play. In the system view that stat is listed in the descriptions of the planets.

So depending on the the strength of your hull and/or shields you may not be able to make it down to the surface of the planet without being crushed. This would be great for example: escaping a couple of Vipers by diving deep into the atmosphere of a gas giant, only to be surprised by an Anaconda that is lurking down there who batters your shields away until you get crushed, or have to climb away and face the other two ships above you etc.

It would be great to hear your hull groaning and creaking and seeing the canopy cracking under the strain as you approach your ship's limit to withstand any more pressure.

777Driver · Apr 5, 2015

ShadowWolf Kell said:
If they made it realistic, spins would be a very serious problem for ED ships. Flight Assist will probably be disabled like in SC. I'm honestly expecting ED's version of atmospheric flight to be pretty arcadish.

Why would spins be an issue? You cant stall a wing on these ships, in fact you cant stall anything on these ships, none of them are designed for lift, they are basically all hulks of metal with powerful thrusters

AsukaZ · Apr 5, 2015

Sounds like fun OP!
You got my vote.

Marc Alexander · Apr 5, 2015

Tinman said:
Well, there are plenty of newer quotes referring to planetary landings in Elite: Dangerous specifically. My point with brining that up was to show that this way of looking at Elite as first and foremost a open world game rather than a "space sim" is hardly new.

I'm aware of that - others may not be

ShadowWolf Kell · Apr 5, 2015

777Driver said:
Why would spins be an issue? You cant stall a wing on these ships, in fact you cant stall anything on these ships, none of them are designed for lift, they are basically all hulks of metal with powerful thrusters

With how thrusters work now, your lift would be your ventral thrusters that have to be manually applied. If you try to land like a helicopter, you're going to stall. If you add yaw to that, instant spin. They'd need to come up with some kind of mechanism to apply down thrust to counter any potential to stall as your speed decreases and your AoA increases. You could simulate that with thrusters mapped to rotaries on a throttle, since it gives you a large degree of control over them.

Not sure how well pulsing them would work, especially on low and high G planets with atmospheres. It'd be too little, or too much.

Salentine · Apr 5, 2015

But after doing it a couple of times, what benefits will there be, whoohoo i've landed on the planet, look at that fantastic scenery, ok take off again now...

Steve50 · Apr 5, 2015

Salentine said:
But after doing it a couple of times, what benefits will there be, whoohoo i've landed on the planet, look at that fantastic scenery, ok take off again now...

Tell that to the people that play KSP for 1000's of hours.

ShadowWolf Kell · Apr 5, 2015

Steve50 said:
Tell that to the people that play KSP for 1000's of hours.

My brother actually got bored with ED and went back to KSP.

Surly_Badger · Apr 5, 2015

Salentine said:
But after doing it a couple of times, what benefits will there be, whoohoo i've landed on the planet, look at that fantastic scenery, ok take off again now...

Buy flags and flag-sticks by the ton, if you're an explorer!!!

To seek and find strange new worlds and micturate upon them!

XWaters · Apr 5, 2015

Hmm.. hope so too, but I have my doubts!

Jezzah · Apr 5, 2015

I'm thinking this mechanic is going to be a less chaotic version of the interdiction mechanic myself.

777Driver · Apr 5, 2015

ShadowWolf Kell said:
With how thrusters work now, your lift would be your ventral thrusters that have to be manually applied. If you try to land like a helicopter, you're going to stall. If you add yaw to that, instant spin. They'd need to come up with some kind of mechanism to apply down thrust to counter any potential to stall as your speed decreases and your AoA increases. You could simulate that with thrusters mapped to rotaries on a throttle, since it gives you a large degree of control over them.

Not sure how well pulsing them would work, especially on low and high G planets with atmospheres. It'd be too little, or too much.

FBW and flight control laws. The bulk of modern FBW aircraft are designed with inherent instability, the 3 laws take care of that issue. I would think if they can pull it off today, 1000 years in the future will be a non issue.

Anyway, stall means loss of lift due to the surface reaching a critical angle of attack. These ships have no surfaces to provide lift, it's all brute force from thrusters governed by flight control laws

Retu81 · Apr 5, 2015

ShadowWolf Kell said:
With how thrusters work now, your lift would be your ventral thrusters that have to be manually applied. If you try to land like a helicopter, you're going to stall. If you add yaw to that, instant spin. They'd need to come up with some kind of mechanism to apply down thrust to counter any potential to stall as your speed decreases and your AoA increases. You could simulate that with thrusters mapped to rotaries on a throttle, since it gives you a large degree of control over them.

Not sure how well pulsing them would work, especially on low and high G planets with atmospheres. It'd be too little, or too much.

Stalls, spins, AOA and such only apply to vehicles that rely on their wings to generate enough lift to stay up. Our ships use their thrusters for maneuvering and flight.