USS, CZ, and any other way of dropping out of SC near a planet should put you in orbit

[Mephane]

As the title says. Right now these instances are treated like fixed places and you are effectively flying under power there (if you stop and then go FAOFF, you start falling!). I find this weird and also sometimes rather annoying, for example when collecting materials and they are constantly moving, or how your ship wobbles whenever looking in the general direction of the planet.

One thing that particularly irks me about it, however, is that this perpetuates wrong ideas about how space and orbits work. Like in Star Trek into darkness when they are in orbit and their engines fail and they start dropping like a stone - that is not how this works, that is not what would actually happen.

I know that sometimes you need to make compromises for the sake of better gameplay, but these instances not being in orbit doesn't serve any better gameplay, and I would say even to the contrary, as in the examples I gave above.

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

It is funny. I often laugh at the idea of nav beacons. Here it is, right next to some ultra massive star and it's just glued there into the viscous matrix that passes for outer space in this game. At that distance and with that much gravity, a nav beacon would need to orbit at some crazy speed but you can pull right up to it like it's a mail box. speed is relative but in this game there is nothing to be relative to.

 

[Jmanis]

As the title says. Right now these instances are treated like fixed places and you are effectively flying under power there (if you stop and then go FAOFF, you start falling!). I find this weird and also sometimes rather annoying, for example when collecting materials and they are constantly moving, or how your ship wobbles whenever looking in the general direction of the planet.

One thing that particularly irks me about it, however, is that this perpetuates wrong ideas about how space and orbits work. Like in Star Trek into darkness when they are in orbit and their engines fail and they start dropping like a stone - that is not how this works, that is not what would actually happen.

I know that sometimes you need to make compromises for the sake of better gameplay, but these instances not being in orbit doesn't serve any better gameplay, and I would say even to the contrary, as in the examples I gave above.

Whenever I take a salvage mission, I hope it's always orbiting a non-landable body. If it's not, I try to hang around in SC in a place where, if it spawns, it'll be out of the orbit of the planet.... having the floating things not under the influence of the body gravity makes things so much easier.

But, it does add challenge (and makes Collector limpets infinitely more useful to fit generally), so I'd prefer everything to be gravity affected.

 

[Maolagin]

I think the engine failure trope is ok actually. They're operating in an unobtanium-powered future of effectively unlimited energy. I just assumed they actually weren't usually in orbit, but using engine power to fight gravity and hover wherever they need to. So pretty much exactly what our ships do when FA-on. Turn off the engines and you fall faster than you might think. At 1G, in the absence of atmosphere, it only takes about three minutes to free-fall 150km.

 

[Bigmaec]

As the title says. Right now these instances are treated like fixed places and you are effectively flying under power there (if you stop and then go FAOFF, you start falling!). I find this weird and also sometimes rather annoying, for example when collecting materials and they are constantly moving, or how your ship wobbles whenever looking in the general direction of the planet.

One thing that particularly irks me about it, however, is that this perpetuates wrong ideas about how space and orbits work. Like in Star Trek into darkness when they are in orbit and their engines fail and they start dropping like a stone - that is not how this works, that is not what would actually happen.

I know that sometimes you need to make compromises for the sake of better gameplay, but these instances not being in orbit doesn't serve any better gameplay, and I would say even to the contrary, as in the examples I gave above.

It depends on how the not-science of the Frame Shift Drive drops you out of supercruise.
If it drops you out of supercruise with a relative velocity of zero (as it does), you fall towards the planet as you should, because you have no (orbital) velocity.
And why should the FSD drop you out of supercruise with an orbital velocity (especially due to failure)? It's not Kerbal Space Program we're playing here...
Everything regarding faster-then-light travel is more tv-tropes than science