I won't be going far

Can any of you Commanders shed light on why I sometimes drop out of glide early when approaching planetary bases? The approach looks good,no errors that I can see. It can sometimes be 50-60 kms which takes a while to travel.I thought it was around 14 kms?

Sorry, meant to reply a few days ago and got distracted...

I've never read any guide on this, nor watched any videos, just sort of worked it out on the job. Early on, I had this happen a few times, and needed to fly the last 50km in normal flight.

It hasn't happened in a long time. So I can not tell you what you may be doing wrong. But I can explain how I do it, Maybe you can spot a difference and work it out from there.

I choose the destination from the navigation panel, or if it's just a planetary landing, and not going to a specific station or location, then I target the planet itself.

I maintain throttle to keep the timer at 12s. I point the ship at a spot some way short of the intended destination, intentionally approaching too steeply (roughly 60 degrees). As the ship transitions in to orbital flight I shallow out the dive and point at the destination, resulting in an approach angle of 30-35 degrees. This should remove any of the blue lines appearing at the bottom of the HUD indicating the dive is too steep.

I continue to add throttle to keep it at 12s for as long as possible. Eventually you won't be able to maintain this, but that's OK. At this point I am usually wide open.

At 2.5km/s you will enter glide. I keep an eye on the distance and try to keep the throttle high enough to stall this until I'm about 70km out. The thing is, this is different each time. Maybe it's gravity (always check the gravity!), or mass or whatever. If it's high G (2G or higher) I will throttle off just in case.

In most cases I will drop out of glide between 4km and 11 km from the destination.

I'm speculating, but I think the trouble you are having occurs when the approach is too shallow, but I have no evidence to back this up.

I think you hit the nail on the head there DB. I did get a 'too shallow' warning once so I approach from a higher angle now. Since then I've not had a problem. I hadn't done many planetary landings until recently,I think I was a little rusty.

I had an odd occurrence today which I'm pretty sure I've never encountered before.

I took a deliver mission to a planetary base in my T-9. I filled up the extra space with goods and set off. When I got to the system it was unexplored so all that showed up was the star I jumped to and a couple of outposts. All I have is the 4C sensor which isn't going to help. I thought you used to be able to buy the data for an unexplored system but I can't see the option any more (in the galaxy map).

So I had to jump out to a nearby system to get to outfitting,sell enough cargo so I can swap one of the small cargo bays for a basic discovery scanner,go back,scan and then I can see the planet and landing site. You could say it was my fault for not checking if the system was explored but honestly I thought the delivery station would show regardless. Lesson learned,I'll hang on to the scanner I think.

I carry ADS and DSS on all of my ships aside from my FDL (combat focused) and the Ananconda (maximizing capacity). Otherwise, they are quite handy to have, as you already know.

Regardless, if this happens again, I believe you can scan the nav beacon to reveal the system

If you mean scan the nav beacon with the sensor suite that didn't work for me. Which begs the question,what does the sensor suite do?

OT : How come you are so into UK football?

LOl, sorry, that was a test for a post I was making at Subsim.

Why? Because it's freaking awesome

I love everything about it. The grounds, the songs, the football, pro-rel, the drama, the personalities, history and tradition. Oh and Liverpool. Just great

Did you enter the nav beacon and scan it in there? Like drop out of supercruise? That should work.

The scan works automatically, just target it and be close enough. No scanner to operate for this.

I did drop out of supercruise,maybe I didn't get close enough. Ah well,I'm sorted now.

I started a fresh game as some of you know and I've come across a few things I've never seen before.

Firstly,and I expect this a bug. I activated the docking computer and nipped off for a 'comfort break' and was surprised when I came back to find my ship hadn't docked but was sitting over the pad. I nudged it forwards and backwards to re-activate the D/C but nothing doing. I then went to outside view and there was a Dolphin sat on my bay. I thought it was a player messing about but then I thought why isn't he under attack? No,it's an NPC. I had to leave the station and re-apply for docking permission. This happened again later in the evening when I had to go back to the same station.

Secondly, I was doing USS's and came across a 'rescue mission' or something like that so I assumed it was to rescue a pilot escape pod. Despite the threat (2) I dropped to the USS and got immediately attacked and destroyed. At the ship buy-back screen it said I had offended someone or other and I was in detention and had to pay a fine. WTH,I didn't do anything wrong? Never saw that before.

Thirdly,I'm playing Vanilla E:D so no Horizons but I noticed I can still salvage mats and data.What is their purpose if there are no Engineers?

Thanks guys

I've not used a DC, but probably nothing to do with that anyway. I don't know what happened there, but last night I flew to the trade CG station and upon entering (while smuggling narcotics haha) I saw a T-9 or T-10 sort of hovering. Didn't give it much thought at first but then suddenly there were lasers being fired and I'm flying through it and wondered what I did and then a ship blew up below the hovering T-9. I have landed at a thousand stations and have never seen weapons fire inside a station in solo. So maybe there is an issue right now with NPCs blocking pads?



I think this was a distress call? That's how they are. An innocent is under attack by bad guys and it's down to you to save them. So the bad guys are hostile to you too as you're there to rescue the unfortunate, or so it appears to me. I usually don't bother with these USSs.



I don't see how they'd be useful if you're not on Horizons.

Here he is,my favourite E:D FAQ guy!

Thanks for the response. It seems odd that I can collect those things but they have no use in the game. Yes,it was a distress call and in future I will also leave them alone. I did however drop to a USS where I collected 5 escape pods. I felt quite good about handing them in.

Playing in open,especially as I'm bopping in and around Erevate is interesting. There were a lot of human players at some of the large stations last night, I just felt that at any second things would kick off but I guess they weren't interested in a 'duckling' in a Hauler

Give it time

I've been flying in open quite a bit, maybe we'll run in to each other out there.

A week ago I was coming in to land and saw a FAS lift off, it was a human. He was traveling in the opposite direction (toward the airlock) and I saw him drift to a stop and turn to face me. Uh-oh. I guessed what was about to happen and gave it full down thrusters at the same time he hit boost to ram me. He went right over the top and slammed in to the station and exploded.

lulz

Yeah,let's see how long I stay in open if that $hit happens to me

Yeah, 90% of it is fine. Some nights I don't encounter any other commanders in my instance, and that can stretch for a few days. Other times I have 6 or more in there with me. Some really stupid names too like CMDR Fluffy Lolly Pop sort of stuff.

I've actually only been interdicted a few times. Personally I only fly certain ships in Open. The Orca, Python and FDL are the only ones because I think I can survive in them. If I want to fly the DBX or one of my other ships I'll switch back to Solo.

I think some jokers are trawling for fodder and if they see an engineered FDL with a Dangerous pilot they might think twice, though plenty more won't care about that. Conversely if you're an unengineered Harmless Hauler some will let you go and psycopaths will jump at the chance.

I visited a station under repair today,do I just run the missions to help?

The missions may help. There is also a log there, perhaps in the station news (center bottom of Station Services) which lists totals of different cargo needed to fully reopen the station. You can sell these to the station Commodity Market to contribute. When these are all at 100% I think the station will be set to reopen.

The total cargo required is huge, but players working together have repaired a couple of stations that I've seen.

Doesn't sound as if I'll make a huge difference in my Cobra then.

To be honest I just wanted to see one. The option to show them on the map isn't checked by default and I only discovered it yesterday. In a nearby system was a Gordon class bulk cargo ship which I assumed was going to be an impressive sight,however it was shot to hell. So many things I haven't seen in this game. They tend to get ignored when I've got my head down grinding away.

Do passenger missions take you to the 'sights' in this game or are they more like cargo runs?

Sightseeing missions take you to some really cool places. And they can pay very well too. The only word of caution I'd offer is that arrival distance is not indicated. So you won't know if the tourist destination is 30 ls or 300,000 until you get there. I've done dozens of sightseeing missions, in the Asp at first, but mostly in the Orca. If you have any questions about them fire away.