Horizons ** WARNING ** Explorers beware

[[VR] Frank_G]

Seem like wrong coding if ships cant handle 2g worlds without trouble.

Not coding... You can safely land on 6.0 g worlds if you do it right. It is the ships mass-thrust-ratio, that is essential. A D class thruster of maximum slot size can handle a 2.0 g world, if you pilot carefully and the ship is not too heavy. D class equipment, lightweight alloys and 4 pips to engines are an explorers best friends when it comes to planetary landings far out in the void.

 

[Lupin]

I am sorry for your loss, but seem we now have to remember to check gravity BEFORE we land regularly.
And yes I have crashed 2 ships due to gravity, but under Beta so I've learned from my mistake.

 

[[VR] Frank_G]

I thought you had to visit a station to get the Planetary Landing Suite installed? In which case it would have made sense to turn in your data then and you would have only lost a couple of weeks worth.

Nope, planetary vehicle hangars and SRVs have to be bought. The planetary approach suite was automatically filled with a free module, when Horizons launched.

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I wonder how you will - with this method - manage to land on some of those very ragged surfaces where you almost literally have to land on a dime. Would you think it's possible with this method (let us start with a Cobra, I'm pretty sure with a Conda the answer would be a clear NO).

A too hard downward impulse or too steep approach would get you killed for sure. Like everything in Elite, planetary landings are dangerous too. I hope we get a "landed first" tag some time.

 

[jonne]

Sorry about your crash. I found a moon around a gas giant, 19x mass of Earth. It was only 2.3G, but my Asp was falling like a rock. Luckily I noticed it was all going to hell just in time to get out with my main thrusters. I don't know how hot 1000K is for an Asp, but today I nearly landed on a small moon baking very close to a star. It was when I saw lava pools at the surface, that I came to my senses and decided to abort.

I'm in a similar situation with a small fortune waiting when and if I get home.

 

[Terry Bruge-Hiplo]

Commiserations on your loss, CMDR, that sucks! That's quite troubling, if your ship can just drop out of glide and pancake like that. Could you elaborate more specifically on what happened? What angle were you approaching at? Did your ship drop from glide much sooner than usual? How quickly did it crash?

I was really surprised by how tricky things get once you start going above about 1.5G, especially in larger ships. Things start to feel reaaaally heavy and, as others have said, down thrusters can be a one way ticket to the ground.

 

[GammaZ]

Well, it would be really interesting and usefull to know how high G actually was...
I landed a lot on 2-3-4G worlds with cobra (because i really like how SRV works on 2+G worlds) and had no issues at all (but yes, i had 4A thrusters). I wonder whether thrusters really affect ship behaviour that much, or OP just did thing very wrong....

 

[LKx]

You had quite the guts to dare going down on a planet with 8 months of exploration data!

 

[Cosmos]

Commiserations on your loss, CMDR, that sucks! That's quite troubling, if your ship can just drop out of glide and pancake like that. Could you elaborate more specifically on what happened? What angle were you approaching at? Did your ship drop from glide much sooner than usual? How quickly did it crash?

I was really surprised by how tricky things get once you start going above about 1.5G, especially in larger ships. Things start to feel reaaaally heavy and, as others have said, down thrusters can be a one way ticket to the ground.

I quite like that going to a planet sometimes poses a challenge, something which I think has been lacking from exploration.

 

[EUS]

Well some explorers did state they wanted exploring to be more challenging, and dangerous.

 

[Lowievisser]

Sorry about your crash. I found a moon around a gas giant, 19x mass of Earth. It was only 2.3G, but my Asp was falling like a rock. Luckily I noticed it was all going to hell just in time to get out with my main thrusters. I don't know how hot 1000K is for an Asp, but today I nearly landed on a small moon baking very close to a star. It was when I saw lava pools at the surface, that I came to my senses and decided to abort.

I'm in a similar situation with a small fortune waiting when and if I get home.

there is no lava ingame yet , you prolly cant land there also , temp doesnt matter (yet i hope)

 

[goemon]

sorry to hear your loss, op. i will test my exploration builds extensivly on high g planet before setting off.

to answer this question:

Interesting thread for
some like me planning a long term exploration jaunt in the near future. I have tried landing my Cobra MkIV on a couple of planets in my home system just to set the binds for the buggy etc, but these were low G planets of 0.06 & 0.07G. Now I remember seeing the gravity as a readout in the control screen head view that appears when you approach a planet but is there any way to know that before even attempting an approach when it might already be too late in the event of a really high G world. I can't remember if it shows in the system map or not and would it show at all if it was an unexplored system?.

if you have a dss equiped and scan a planet, g is shown in system map.

 

[[VR] Frank_G]

I quite like that going to a planet sometimes poses a challenge, something which I think has been lacking from exploration.

Yes, i really like, that taking a risk is back to exploration. I also liked black holes dealing heat damage and actually being sort of a threat, back in the early days. With the few dangers out there gone, exploration became pretty much sight seeing. Now it is back with some spice and you actually need to risk something if you want stuff from some planetary surfaces. I really hope, the invisible ring systems stay in the game, as they are threats, that can be avoided by the vigilant pilot, if you know how to. You can actually see them, if you approach from the right angle. Surviving threats in deep space with your own wits and knowledge is a real reward and a true experience. Just what a good immersive game needs.
I see Horizons as the biggest gift, explorers got so far... Updated the game from good to awesome for me. Cant wait to see, how this season progresses.

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Well some explorers did state they wanted exploring to be more challenging, and dangerous.

Totally guilty.

 

[[VR] Frank_G]

sorry to hear your loss, op. i will test my exploration builds extensivly on high g planet before setting off.

From test your mettle to test your metal - offers a whole lot of fun, if you do that yourself. Good luck and safe landings, CMDR.

 

[Cosmos]

Yes, i really like, that taking a risk is back to exploration. I also liked black holes dealing heat damage and actually being sort of a threat, back in the early days. With the few dangers out there gone, exploration became pretty much sight seeing. Now it is back with some spice and you actually need to risk something if you want stuff from some planetary surfaces. I really hope, the invisible ring systems stay in the game, as they are threats, that can be avoided by the vigilant pilot, if you know how to. You can actually see them, if you approach from the right angle. Surviving threats in deep space with your own wits and knowledge is a real reward and a true experience. Just what a good immersive game needs.
I see Horizons as the biggest gift, explorers got so far... Updated the game from good to awesome for me. Cant wait to see, how this season progresses.

Yeah I was always rather dissapointed with vanilla exploration because it seemed rather repetative, scan scan scan.. Yet landing on planet surfaces makes it a lot more appealing. I do hope as time goes by we see further embellishment but for now I'm enjoying what we have. I just spent a couple of sessions exploring an entire system, quite close to populated space, too me so long infact that I was running out of fuel just travelling the system.

And that fresh virgin system with so many planets has my name on it.. I must be getting soft..whats happening to me? lolz

 

[SMcA]

Can anyone with analogue vertical thrusters report back as to whether they are usable close to the ground on high G worlds?

I'm wondering if the binary ON/OFF style vertical controls are now a liability in this one specific situation... and whether an infinitely variable vert input would allow a pilot to "feather" the input, and actually use them to land.

Have a Virtual +Rep for that idea. I tried it on my X-52 Pro and what a difference. Much more control . I will keep dual controls the digital one for normal flying and the analogue one for landing.

What I think is happening now is that the ship's "FA On" system is using vertical thrusters all the time to stabilise the ship, ie. tending towards "hover". But when we flick a binary UP or (God help us) DOWN thrust control, it's taking that delicate balance and basically throwing it out the window.

How it felt to me was; when I used the digital thrusters there was a delay in feedback. I kept the down thruster on for too long until when my Asp started to descend it was accelerating too fast to stop. With analogue thrusters you can get very fine control and descend at a few m/s or less. One advantage was that I could adjust the pitch and roll to keep the hologram in the Blue. Something I found hard to do with the digital controls.

I am going to rethink my bindings as I was using one rotary control for the radar scale and I don't want to loose that. I do want to keep the analogue thrusters as well.

Edit: Oops! Sorry OP.
I am gutted for you.

 

[jonne]

there is no lava ingame yet , you prolly cant land there also , temp doesnt matter (yet i hope)

Oh, that's good to know. I didn't stay to find out. By lava I mean yellow rivers on an almost bright yellow surface. This moon was tiny, I went down to orbital cruise only.

 

[PiggyPiggyPig]

Thanks everyone for your kind words, really appreciate it, thanks!....and sure its just a game, no real tears but damn.
On reflection I've decided I don't want the credits or the data back, not that I had the option but it would kill the idea of risk and its risk that draws us in. I hold my hands up, my mistake entirely,
that's life in ED I guess but I wish I was a little more educated about the gravity thing. Yeah I know gravity is a thing in real life but it never occurred to me that it was being simulated when landing.

I can only afford to dedicate a few hours per week to playing the game, so yeah, although I'm gutted about the data, whats worse is being back home where I started. It took me forever to get out there.
If you could teleport me back to the ETA Carina Nebula tomorrow to start over with nothing I'd be one very happy cmdr. I know I'll struggle to motivate myself back out there inch by inch.
I've been playing Battlefield instead today and already my mind is turning to mush, so I reckon I will head out again but not for a while.

Save landings everyone.

Commiserations on your loss, CMDR, that sucks! That's quite troubling, if your ship can just drop out of glide and pancake like that. Could you elaborate more specifically on what happened? What angle were you approaching at? Did your ship drop from glide much sooner than usual? How quickly did it crash?

I was really surprised by how tricky things get once you start going above about 1.5G, especially in larger ships. Things start to feel reaaaally heavy and, as others have said, down thrusters can be a one way ticket to the ground.

Thanks man. It all happened so quick, by the time I realized what was happening it was all over. I equipped the Cobra with the very best of everything before leaving on my long voyage.
I had the best thrusters, the best shields, the best power distributor etc. It was worth in excess of 6 million credits. I was thinking way ahead about my return home with all that data and running into pirates.

So there I was approaching the planet in glide after coming out of orbital cruise just moments before, so still fairly high. I had my sights on a creator near the horizon. My attitude was a shallow 20 or 30 degrees. I was taking things nice a cautiously after my last encounter.......then the ground came up to meet me. Hello old friend. GAME OVER.

I'm not good in those situations. Eight months out and you forget how to fly. I tend to freeze up in panicky situations. I didn't think to use the thruster's. My first instinct was to point the nose straight up into the night sky and select max power. In that skyward position you can no longer see the ground and I had this terrible weightless sinking feeling in my stomach. I dared not look out the side window.

I guess I just assumed that all landable planets were safe. It never occurred to me that gravity was going to be an issue. The ED Horizons promotional videos made it all look like so much fun.
As someone said earlier, ED is part sim part game, that seems obvious now. Someone also once said, Assumption is the mother of all ..... ups.

 

[CaptainKremmen]

Have a Virtual +Rep for that idea. I tried it on my X-52 Pro and what a difference. Much more control . I will keep dual controls the digital one for normal flying and the analogue one for landing.



How it felt to me was; when I used the digital thrusters there was a delay in feedback. I kept the down thruster on for too long until when my Asp started to descend it was accelerating too fast to stop. With analogue thrusters you can get very fine control and descend at a few m/s or less. One advantage was that I could adjust the pitch and roll to keep the hologram in the Blue. Something I found hard to do with the digital controls.

I am going to rethink my bindings as I was using one rotary control for the radar scale and I don't want to loose that. I do want to keep the analogue thrusters as well.

Edit: Oops! Sorry OP.
I am gutted for you.

Yes, I've just spotted a spare X52 radial control (left thumb, lower). Put it to work as Vertical Thrust Axis. It works beautifully when landing, but I haven't tested Achenar 3 yet. Will have to try this before leaving for the Distant Pancakes exploration trip.

 

[shadmar]

OP: That's quite alot lost. I know the feeling.
Anyway a made tutorial on landing/takeoff High-G worlds on D-equipent (SAFE method) this was 9.77g:

[video=youtube;usm21vm0zkk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usm21vm0zkk[/video]
[video=youtube;JFFsZlC3Dro]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFFsZlC3Dro[/video]

 

[SMcA]

Yes, I've just spotted a spare X52 radial control (left thumb, lower). Put it to work as Vertical Thrust Axis. It works beautifully when landing, but I haven't tested Achenar 3 yet. Will have to try this before leaving for the Distant Pancakes exploration trip.

May I suggest using the upper one, you get better (finer) control. I tried using the lower one but it was too easy to accelerate too hard. Better than the digital controls though.