Mech stuck flying around the world

[Quintarus]

My mech is out of energy but stuck in basic sail mode flying fast around the world. His energy bar is zero and you have no control of him. I cannot break the cycle or land. Is there a way to reset this?

[Zigamus]

Try pressing ALT, this should make him land

[josmith7]

If you have any fuel in your inventory you could add it to the fuel chamber to get some power to land.


If not, then the quickest and easiest solution is simply to load your most recent auto-save.

Alternatively Icarus will trickle charge if you don't touch the controls (and he's not hovering over a gas/ice giant) - so if you just leave the mech flying for 10 minutes or so you should have regained enough power to slow down and land.

[Rekal]

Congratulations, you've managed to put yourself in orbit. Nice. Now, I'm assuming you've completely spent all of your fuel in your inventory and cannot add any other items to charge your core? Lots of stuff is burnable, be sure to check everything to try and get some power. If you do find anything you can use, immediately after you put it in press the S key. Down, backwards, whatever you want to call it. What it will do will slow you down and you'll fall out of orbit.

If you have burnt everything, then right now you're inside 1000m altitude of the planet and thus your internal energy generation is being sucked out before you can use it. Why this happens, who knows, it's probably some auto-flight adjusting setting that the dev's put in and this behavior is an unforeseen side-effect.

Good news and bad news.

Bad news is you're dead in the water. You can't do anything to change your situation short of loading a previous autosave or turning sandbox mode to give yourself fuel.

Good news is you probably don't have to do anything. The number of perfect orbits that exist is vanishingly small compared to the number of orbits you could wind up in. Eventually your orbit will change and start to elongate into an elliptical and one of two things will happen. One, the short end of the elliptical will come so close to the planet that you'll drop out of sail mode and fall to the planet. Or two, the long end of your elliptical path will extend past 1000m, you'll start charging up again. and regain control.

You can confirm that your orbit is changing by watching the altitude indicator each time around. If the max altitude increases each time around then you'll get out eventually.

So for now, check for fuel, and if nothings available...wait. Let it run and read a book :)

[Kyrros]

Originally posted by Quintarus:

[...] stuck in basic sail mode flying fast around the world.

Congrats! I'm honestly impressed (and a little jealous), as I've tried to do that ON PURPOSE several time before and have never been able to manage it.

I do have a question, though. Is this a regular solid planet or a Gas/Ice Giant - as that very quickly becomes an entirely DIFFERENT situation.

If you're 'stuck' around a Gas Giant, you'll need to use your Alt key to 'land'. Landing on a Gas giant is not like landing on a solid planet; you are in permanent hover mode (like being over water on a solid planet) which drains power constantly.

The good news though, if you are stuck around a Gas/Ice Giant; when you're in hover mode around it you can manually mine the atmosphere for raw Hydrogen/Deuterium/FireIce to use as fuel to launch yourself back into space. Just mine what you need, then stick it in your fuel chamber, charge up, then be off!

[Rekal]

So I went and played around with orbiting. The constant power draw seems to be the Icarus trying to maintain an orbit. It'll slow down or speed up to give you a good view of the planet you're circling.

I think the range is actually somewhere between 300 and 400 for when you'll finally disconnect from the planet and stop trying to auto-orbit. To get a fun orbit I flew up to around 300ish meters and let the auto-orbit power draw run me out of energy. It kept my speed around 85m/s until it stalled out. This resulted in an elliptical orbit that went from 300 to 200 max and 35 to 100 minimum. It was oscillating, probably because the gas giant nearby but each time it oscillated it extended lower and higher.

The earlier advice I gave was actually incorrect as I'd never gotten myself stuck so I hadn't experienced it. Even in a orbit with zero power you can successfully de-orbit yourself. Simply press and hold W (forward) and Left Shift (accelerate) while pointed at the planet. Your orbit will gradually decline until you hit the ground. It might take a few loops, but you'll get there. I've tried and confirmed it twice, first was after circling for 15 minutes.

[Skythe]

Is this a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke? How on earth does the game end your run for pressing the wrong key(s)?!?

[Nekogod]

Originally posted by Skythe:

Is this a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke? How on earth does the game end your run for pressing the wrong key(s)?!?

It doesn't. Did you even read the 2 year old thread you necro'd?

At least put in what your issue is so people can help.

[Mike]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.