Who has the time to spend half an hour flying around a planet in the dark?

[widukind]

I am a new player and I am just baffled by the hostile environment in Elite Dangerous. I am on my 1st mission to pick up a parcel. I have to fly around a massive planet because my objective is obscured by it. I have already spent almost 1/3 of my fuel and 1/3 hour flying in the dark and I will probably run out before I reach my destination. Who thinks this up? Can you be any more hostile to new players????

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

If you fly higher - you fly faster.

[CRCGamer]

Or you could have simply supercruised in a wide arc around the gravity well of the planet so your speed wasn't being heavily reduced.

Elite Dangerous while having some arcade style game play concessions does have some of the up front simulator learning curve. Gravity matters quite a bit. Large gravity wells slow you down while you are in proximity to them. Also landing a ship on a high gravity planet can be quite challenging... and can cost you your ship quite quickly in the case of mistakes being made.

[mardon40dc]

Ok, deep breath and bring the throttles back to idle...You need to watch YT for "how to" videos and read/watch info on the games mechanics. After a short time you'll realize this game is easy to fly and do things in. Not to say its "easy" at the start but in the end its really not difficult to get things sorted out. Case in point...Landing on planets isn't hard but does require a good understanding of how the game manages this and a basic understanding of how flight works and the effect astronomical bodies interact with your ship.

[Sam Willet]

It's a learning experience. First lesson is don't fly too close to massive gravity wells.

[godsend_slim]

yup dont fly inside planets unless you want to move short spaces. its a space game fly in space then dive down easy though or ya ship get damage coming in to fast. 45 degree once u get meter

[Deus]

it is a learning curve for sure. I tend to make a loop if I'm approaching to fast is my current strategy. Have bounced off the surface and at least once didn't bounce 0,0

[ZombieHunter]

Fly higher into SC, go around the planet, land where you need to. 2 minutes.

Elite has 2 modes of controlled flight. Super cruise and local. Super cruise is for getting around quickly in star systems. Or relatively quickly. Local is down to meters per second flight. The number you see is meters per second in local. In super cruise you will reach super luminal speeds quickly.

Horizons has 3 modes of controlled flight....but still really 2. Super cruise, local and planet based. Planet is exactly like local and uses the same grid scale. Speed is in meters per second.

The final method of travel common to all versions is FSD which gets you from system to system and is uncontrolled flight between star systems.

You can be dropped out between systems into local by Thargoids. You can be dropped into local from SuperCruise by interdictions. Or you can manually drop whenever you want.

Elite Dangerous travel modes are about frames of reference and are designed so that system to system travel is fast, travel within a system is relatively quick and so that local travel is more fine grained, albeit much slower.

People complained that Elite was not true real time travel between systems but this would simply not have worked from a game play perspective. Space is massive. I don't think people realize just how massive it is so what FD came up with works pretty well.

When you FSD you enter a loading screen. When you get dropped to local or planet you enter a loading 'phase'. When you leave local or planet to go to super cruise you enter a loading 'phase'.

[Elitch]

^^^

[Hobo Misanthropus]

You're on your first mission, in like your first hour playing the game. These things that seem daunting and convoluted become second nature eventually, what took hours will take minutes.

When you learn a new skill, do you normally expect to be masterful in it within the first hour?

[malorob]

You could always use the Auto pilot

[Alpha-methyl]

This has always been one of those things that scared new players away from Elite Dangerous - but it's not as daunting as it seems, once you know the "rules" for things like travel.

Fortunately the "assist" modules can help you get a good idea of the "rules" - but in general, further away from object = faster speed.

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If you're in orbit around a planet and still in supercruise, aligning your trajectory with the altitudes highlighted in blue, near the center of your screen, will increase your speed.

If you drop out of supercruise and you're still hundreds (or more) of km away from your destination, you will want to angle your nose up (escape trajectory) and get back into supercruise, and follow the above. That formula will get you just about anywhere.

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I know other people said this in posts above, I'm really just posting because I wanted to additionally encourage you to keep it up until you get over that hump. It's the hardest one by far, because you have no frame of reference

...and even though some people supposedly can play with mouse and keyboard only, I highly recommend using a controller with an analogue stick for the flight parts of the game. You can use a controller AND bind keys on the keyboard to ship functions as you need - It makes a very big difference for most people's ability to take to the game - some control mechanics don't translate that well to things like driving and flight.

Well, you can worry about all that once you've got the hang of the basic functions. I promise it isn't as bad as it seems, it's actually quite satisfying once you've got it down. At least, for people who like "space" games in general, and understand it isn't going to be instantaneous ;) with exceptions. This game does a good job representing the scale of our galaxy. Almost too well.

[Pinkeh]

Trying to fly directly to your destination is too slow.

You have two options.

1. Get orbital and slingshot around the planet in orbital cruise. The farther you're from the planet the faster your ship travels.
2. Leave the system and return. Realign and enter atmos.

[Isa]

Facing exactly the same issue and to be honest this game has really a bad design when it comes to flying around and reaching destination etc. A bit more noob friendly would be great!

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Originally posted by Isa:

Facing exactly the same issue

The solution is exactly the same, too: fly higher to fly faster. Fly in supercruise to fly even faster. A planetary gravity slows you down.

and to be honest this game has really a bad design when it comes to flying around and reaching destination etc.

A lot of people consider it to be exactly the opposite: this game has one of the best gaming flight designs.

[Faustrecht ت]

Originally posted by Isa:

Facing exactly the same issue and to be honest this game has really a bad design when it comes to flying around and reaching destination etc. A bit more noob friendly would be great!

Fully understandable. But you should keep in mind that this game is based on a C64 game.
Technically this is Elite III if you can call it like that. Just on modern machines.
These old games relied on their community. In the 80´s mostly with friends as we had no internet there.If u needed advice you mostly had to buy a Gaming magazine with proper information.
I think FDEV have exactly this in mind. Trial and Error
You can always ask a commander in here or go on one of the (in)official discords and look how they play it.
Its very easy to land once you figured it out like many stuff in ED.I still make mistakes even i played over 800hrs 😂
But yes nowadays i would also wish more information as many people dont have the time ,they had in their youth to figure out what to do. Tutorials were a good solution.

Make sure the base is a bit on the lower screen. then your ship would disable FSD and go into glide mode. If you do it right then your ship just needs a few thruster boosts to get where you want. Most important: Use your Navigation panel on the left side and select the base. (if you did not already) If its full yellow in your cockpit then you are in the right angle.
If the circle is with with interrupted lines then its out of direct view and you should orbit in super cruise until it becomes clear. Best thing is that your ship will land automatically once you deploy landing gear.
I had same problem as beginner. Dont worry we all were noobs when we started.