Why is the planetary landing so broken?

[GhostofDunsel]

This is the 10th time (out of 11) I have had to land on a planet and once again the location is ON THE OTHER F'ING SIDE OF THE PLANET. Seriously, you do not learn where you are trying to land until you are suborbital which means you are going to spend an hour getting to where you should be. The planetary landing module should be smart enough to figure this out and bring you down without this level of trash. This is breaking the game for me, I find no enjoyment in this. Why is this so broken?

Thank you (I think) to so many who corrected me on my noobness. I did find some comments useful while others were quite dismissive. To those who helped - thank you. To the others - karma will deal with you in a fashion that you dealt to others.

[Gone Oh!™]

What are you even talking about?
When you approach the planet before going into orbital cruise check your nav panel to see planetary signal sources. Set your target then you'll see exactly where to go. If the target is obscured it will be a dotted line. Cruise on over, once you get close start angling down, going into glide, congrats on landing where you wanted.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Originally posted by GhostofDunsel:

Seriously, you do not learn where you are trying to land until you are suborbital

This is incorrect. You will see that your destination circle is dashed long before you enter a planet.

[JL::Jose-Juan Kenobi]

Just because you don't know how to do it, it means is broken :-)

[Pctechnik]

he's right though.

[Agony_Aunt]

The marker should appear dashed well before you enter orbital cruise. Pay attention, and if the target is on the other side of the planet fly around it before you hit orbital cruise.

Also, why are you spending an hour getting where you need to be? Even if you do make a mistake, enter the planet's grip, you just fly up, enter supercruse again, and fly around. It might cost you a minute or two, but not an hour.

[mav001au]

Its definitely not broken if I get inside the planets atmosphere far away from my target I just go back up in supercruise and get closer to my mark if its dotted I fly around to the other side of the planet further away

[ShelLuser]

I've made plenty of mistakes, but having to spend one hour is bogus. Like the others said: be sure to target the station, not the entire planet.

And maybe try to make yourself familiar with the basic game mechanics? Because this is definitely not broken.

[Sasquatch]

I've gotten to where I kinda like planetary landings. Yeah, the first couple were bogus. But now I just orbit until I'm almost on top of the target, then drop and glide in a spiral like a buzzard circling a carcass. I get down pretty quick and don't have to worry about gliding hundreds of kilometers to get to the base.

If anyone tries the spiral approach, be prepared. The ship handling changes drastically when you pop out of OC.

[5hadowfax]

Come on now, landing on a planet is not exactly rocket science.

[nzguzzi]

Captain...
We have found the problem !
It is between the chair and screen........

Seriously though, its childs play.
Put speed into middle of blue
Keep the landing area high on the planet, come in on that angle ( its about 30 degrees )
Glide finishes approx at 80km, then again again at approx 12km
Don't touch anything until it hits the 12km range, it will self level.
I then just target base, hit request landing and shut speed down for docking computer.

All this spiral thing is BS.
You just get landing site at 12 o clock but so its a full yellow ring.
Aim at the middle of yellow circle and done as long as speed is in the blue.
If my seven year old can do it....... come on for real?

[Sasquatch]

Something that works isn't BS. And straight lines are boring.

[Jeffreyac]

I use the straight line if I'm paying attention.... and the spiral as an 'Oh, ^%$#, I need to fix this, I'm overshooting!" maneuver.

Both work, to an extent.... :)

[Jeebs]

I don't know what you're talking about, it's stupidly easy... if you do it just right, you'll come out of glide mode (more like ballistic mode, really) about 4-5 km on top of the base and you can request docking before they've even acknowledged your presence.

If you drop in on the wrong side of the planet and then try to fly there with conventional thrusters, that's on you not the game. As was pointed out, if the circle is dashed and greyish-brown instead of solid and yellow, that means it's obstructed. When you're in SC that usually means it's on the other side of the planet or at least beyond the horizon so you have to fly around before entering orbit.

[Joonyah]

Good to see there are still total noobs to this 7 year old game.

Good stuff.

[Ghost]

I guess I'm not understanding something; on my screen the crash site I'm trying to land at shows as a solid circle.... then, when I break atmo... it will turn into a dotted circle. It's very frustrating having to guess and then trying to super cruise back out of atmo and try again. I've been in the situation where I think I've traveled far enough around the planet to see the circle and then glide back in only to have it become dotted again. Maybe some of you are looking at a base entry versus a crash site entry, bit for me it's not showing as dotted until after I'm stuck in atmo. :(