Slowing down in FSD

[ENDex]

How do you do it? I've watched all of their videos and hours worth of tutorials online, yet every time I press "s" to slow down the craft for a disengage IT SPEEDS UP. I can't even dock anywhere because I just overshoot everything.

[BrawnyFanta]

You need to slow down when you are about 8 or 7 seconds away then keep the needle on the bottom of the blue bit until it's safe enough to drop.

[ArtificialQT]

That's cuz the bar in the throttle shows your speed relative to what the Nav Computer thinks is safe, not your actual speed.

You're not speeding up. The Nav Computer is suddenly realizing that you're going waaay too fast for what's considered safe, so it represents it by moving the bar up.

Your actual speed is the number above your throttle.

[vrseven]

Yeah this confuses me too. Even approaching a signal source/FSD wake it slows down then as I get close speeds up, kinda annoying. I can understand the computer handling speed around stations orbiting planets but signal sources in deep space with nothing around?

[FirstToDie]

Climb, decend or anything else that will bleed off speed. I'll usually just do a 90 degree climb when going to fast and wait til my speed drops, then level off again on the station or instance.

I'm not entirely sure about how speed works in the game, however it does appear your ship is affected by gravity wells. You will see when you are close to a planet or star, your engines even at max power, have a hard time breaking you away from the gravity well. Once you are outside that well, your speed then increases quickly. This alone causes quite quite a bit of overshoot.

I'm still pretty much a noob, but with a little practice, you can avoid overshooting almost entirely.

[Edelweiss ✿]

leave the throttle in the blue and youll never overshoot anything (unless a nearby celestial body's gravity well slingshots you)

[Ser Cartoon of House Head]

Yeah, steer away from the target (can't say climb or descend because you are in space, there is no up or down). Not even sure why this is a thing though since there is no wind resistance in space that would slow your ship down by turning. They use atmosphereic flying mechanics in this game which is wierd, especially giving space ships wings. Like why would a space ship need wings?

[Jonny*Combat]

Originally posted by BrawnyFanta:

You need to slow down when you are about 8 or 7 seconds away then keep the needle on the bottom of the blue bit until it's safe enough to drop.

This right here. At 6-7 seconds (or is it minutes?), pull the throttle down into the blue zone and you will be at the perfect approach speed.

[ENDex]

Thanks for all the tips. I got the game yesterday and would probably have rage quit if a) it wasn't so expensive for what I usually buy and b) I don't feel like being defeated by a learning curve.

[FightinWelsh]

it can be a steep curve at that.

[[ORD] Mechadius]

Keep in mind the gravitational pull of anything even close. some of the stations are close when you are in FTL and you will hit the gravitational pull of a nearby planet as you approach the station and at a certain point you break from the pull and suddenly speed up and will shoot past your target

[superjunk]

Mass has a profound effect on your FSD. Your maximum speed is determined by your proximity to a massive body, and the more mass it has, the more you slow down. The computer saying "SLOW DOWN" is not an instruction, it's telling you you're currently being affected by a gravity well.

[ENDex]

So what would the max number of "real speed" be to safely get out of FSD?

[analog_relic]

ENDex, when/if you find an answer to that one, let me know please. I use the orbital tracks to work out the best approach path to try and minimize the Gravity Well effects. I find it is often better for me to enter the system, use the various orbit tracks to work where the plane of the ecliptic is and then climb above/below the plane until I can more or less dive straight up or down to approach the station/outpost horizontally, with the station between your ship and the planet.

Doing this, I seem to avoid, for the most part, the Gravity Well over shoot issues. Then I approach with the throttle set to the bottom of the blue range and maintain speed until 7 secs out and nudge the throttle up or down to keep it at 7 secs until the Safe Disconnect speed and distance have been reached.

I think that approaching the station at an angle that makes you approach in such a way as to head towards the planet and then away from the planet will cause an overshoot.

Have any others found this type of approach (first paragraph) remove or at least reduces the effect of Gravity Well overshoot issues? AR

[Baker]

You can target open space, or in other words un-lock nav target the station then you can slow down faster.
I don't know why the Supercruise acceleration and deceleration rates are tired to the nav locked target but they are.
Very noticeable when approaching any USS too.

[Sechesin]

Probably gonna make a guide on this subject. Here's the bits relevant to this topic.

To avoid overshoot,

*Keep your destination targeted at all times

*Allign your ship to the target, activate super-cruise (J) and throttle up until your *throttle indicator* enters the glowing blue field and the indicator glows.
(You can go faster, but remember to drop back down into the blue field at around 500Ls distance or you may overshoot)

*Keep your throttle indicator in the blue field. Your ship will automatically adjust its speed conservatively.
(The lower you can move the throttle while maintaining the glow, the better chance you won't overshoot.)

*Keep an eye on the "Speed" indicator in the lower left-hand corner once you're within 1Ls distance.
(You should be in the blue 'safe disengage' speed BEFORE distance is in the blue 'safe disengage' distance.)

*When your distance is ~5Mm, be prepared to hit "J" once you're within minimum distance (~2Mm)