Yeah, no dice – they (the grip controls on the left and right controller) move left and right through the tabs on the left-side UI window, but never move to the flag. I am completely befuddled at what sort of QA could leave a necessary function out of a default control mapping. No one must ever have tried it (or it’s actually there but so hidden I’ve been unable to stumble on it).
Oh, yeah, that was part of the problem - the settings in the UI panel control config were confusing - there’s a left and right that works inside a given window, (Config Menu: Controls: Interface Mode: UI Panel Left, UI Panel Right) and there are left and right that move through various tabs (Controls: Interface Mode: Next Panel Tab and Previous Panel Tab). In the Galaxy map, the panel tabs move the tabs in the window that floats off to the left, but will never move over to the flag. The UI Panel Left & Right will move between the window and the flag.
It still seems like about half my time in this game is tweaking the control settings - I have almost every switch and button on my HOTAS configured to something, and I still keep discovering things that I haven’t set up. I have a cheat sheet so I don’t forget the less-frequently used controls.
Still, landing is a breeze when you can both translate and rotate on all axes at the same time.
That is, when I don’t accidentally land at platform 31 when I was supposed to be landing at 13 and get a 600 space buck fine for loitering. “It looked like 13 when I was coming up from behind it!” doesn’t seem to be a convincing excuse. :smack:
I apologise for the dumb question:
Would this game accommodate a Care Bear? (I hate forced PvP and griefing with the heat of a thousand Wokf-Raynets.)
Sure. Play solo like BKB does or join a PvE-only private group like Mobius. Given your location, you’d want the one called Mobius PVE, assuming they don’t grow too big and divide again before you get the game.
Yeah, Mobius is now so large that they’re talking about splitting us in the Western Hemisphere into two separate groups. Frontier really should get another server just for Mobius at this point.
I have somewhat foolishly taken a 4 week mission to a tourist beacon near Sag A*, and am taking my dolphin out into the black. I went along to Hillary and Amundsen stations before heading out on my own, but I’ve already been scanned once, so I’ll have to hope I don’t get got on the way back.
It sort of annoys me that all the explorers are “secretive” and don’t want to be scanned, it’s no like my explorer ship is built for smuggling.
Finally remember to claim those bounties. Got about 50K for both.
Installed a Kill Warrant Scanner for next time.
Thinking about getting another Beluga, this time only servicing surface stations.
I have reached the tourist beacon! It’s only 166ly from SagA* so I’m going to pop in and have a look at that before I go home.
2 weeks and 4 days to get there!
that’s not real time right ?
So, what is the deal with this alien stuff I have been hearing about?
Well… Kind of.
It took about 8 hours of actual game time to get there, and that was rushing. It’ll take the same amount back, although I may be more relaxed about it. That 8 goes of play time has to be complete in the next 18 days though.
So I broke down and bought the game. I am f’ing killing myself in the second tutorial. How do I contact the station for landing permission? The tutorial says use the left hand panel and select contacts tab. I can’t get to that tab. I can get on that screen but I can’t do anything that let’s me get to that tab or request the landing rights. The videos seem to assume I know how to do it.
One of us!
If you’re on a gamepad, you should be able to switch tabs with the shoulder buttons.
Okay, I figured out how to ask for landing permissions. Now, figuring out how to land is going to be a bit more problematic. There is a lot of my paint all over the flight deck.
I do have the Steam game pad, is that better for flying than the mouse/keyboard? Does anyone here use a stick?
I use an Xbone controller, mapped thus:
I don’t play as much as I used to (and remember that I started this thread way back when), but I still use a stick. I think it’s set up as up/down for pitch, left/right for roll, the thumb hat is for forward/back/left/right thrusters (makes landing easier), two buttons for up/down thrusters, and twist the stick left/right for yaw thrusters (for those days when you realize you landed at an outpost facing the wrong direction…).
I don’t think any non-HOTAS-level controller is going to be better than mouse/keyboard for the kind of precision work you have to do to land in this post-civil-engineering society. You basically need to find the “alternate” flight controls (the low-power directional thrusters for each axis). Get near the dock and use these “teeny movement” things until you stumble on the two-pixel-wide “acceptable” location to be considered docked.
Or, do what I do – land only at external flight decks (they’re a lot easier to hit when you don’t have to fly in through the bidirectional (!) toaster slot), and buy a docking computer as your first upgrade.
I seriously don’t understand the devs’ attitude toward the “landing is basically impossible in a lot of control schemes” problem that Elite has, but they haven’t fixed it in three years, so I doubt they’re going to now. They aim for “realism,” but no realistic society would allow the carnage that their horrific landing pad/station designs produce. I know of at least two people who just flat out quit the game after trying to land a few times, and I suspect that that number is actually huge. It’s simply no fun, and I don’t know why it’s in the game that way.
A docking computer isn’t flawless (it gets stuck on the stations near the toaster slot fairly often), but it almost eliminates this pain.
Post 3 on this thread in 2014 I complained that they somehow made docking worse than it was in the 80s. I still follow this thread and still kinda want to play, but still haven’t gotten past that part.
My favorite part is that the toaster slot on the big stations ROTATE. So you basically have to either fly through the middle of the slot while rolling, or be able to go up, down, left, right, and roll simultaneously to go through the thing the way you’re “supposed to.” And of course there’s ships going both ways through the single entrance/exit.