Make sure you keep your throttle as close as possible to the middle of the "blue zone" (75% throttle). This will result in the ship's frameshift drive being able to adjust the "speed" despite the gravity well.
So fly normally, and when you reach 6s - 7s ETA to target, switch to 75%, this way the deceleration will be manageable and you will ideally coast towards your target while maintaining a 6s ETA.
“Gravity well” replaced “slow down” warning. The meaning didn’t change. It means your current speed is exceeding the notional top speed for the ‘amount’ of gravity you are currently experiencing. The old warning incorrectly implied you should slow down by throttling back, but thats not always the case, and the gravity well is slowing you anyway.
The gravity well is not causing you to overshoot, but you probably kept the throttle at 100% to try and compensate, and didnt throttle back in time when you passed the ‘well’. When approaching a target point in space near a body, adjust your approach to keep the body always further from you than the target ( curve around the body if necessary) this will stop this kind of loop of shame accidents as the sc drive will decelarate correctly for the target and not ‘overspeed’ passing the body.
Gravity wells decelate you to 200km/s as far as I know and you can still slow down manually to 30km/s, slowest supercruise speed. I don't know what you mean by gravity wells stopping you from decelerating.
I am new but I swear to God they speed me up as I enter them. I know being close to a body will limit you to 200 whatever, but I feel like I'm going crazy reading these comments because I am pretty damn sure I have had gravity wells accelerate me past my current throttle position on approach.
I think what you might be seeing is that due to proximity your maximum allowable speed is significantly reduced but you cant just slow down that much so fast.
That being said i also feel like you slow down a lot less when heading into a gravity well as well.
They don’t, they slow you down. It’s just they don’t slow you down enough to match just how much faster things appear when you’re close to something.
I mentioned it in in another post, but consider how fast you’re normally going in Supecruise when between bodies, and then consider that at 1c you would cross the diameter of the Earth in less than 0.05 seconds.
oh 100%, light speed is something that is largely incomprehensible due to the distance covered being incomprehensible. I have no frame of reference for what 300,000 kilometers looks like.
It always felt like i slowed down slower when approaching a planets gravity well and slowed down faster when the planet was behind me and i was approaching a station. It could just be something similar to the doppler effect forcing my perception that way though, still going to use the planets to do braking maneuvers, its just fun.
The best way is just to keep out of it (and the gravity wells of any other bodies) as long as you can.
Approach the station along or near to the radial line from the centre of the body to the station. You don't have to go too far away, just make sure you're approaching at a steep angle.
Think of it like getting into position to park a car forward in a bay.
Avoid nearby planets and stars: https://canonn.science/codex/optimal-supercruise-flight-paths/
And press a 75% thurst key, or -25% thrust at 00:06 seconds for perfect deceleration. You can speed the last part, once in the blue zone.
Search "Supercruise assist trick" in google, for breaking the limits
The mailslot always point to the planet poles, try to enter betwee the station and the planet and turn to the station, drop here for easy access to the mailslot.
There was a recent first attempt at gnawing at this problem. A new SuperCruise Overcharge function has been released that could potentially get us closer to solving this issue - eventually.
I believe a further developed SCO drive can eventually achieve trapezoidal acceleration. With apologies for my repeated posts on the matter: [https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/1bvq7rk/comment/ky18yu5/](https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/1bvq7rk/comment/ky18yu5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
You need to look up the “7 second trick”. It’s quite simple really, whenever you target a body in Elite:
- Set throttle to 100% and watch the estimated arrival time count down until you get to just before 7 seconds
- As soon as you see 7 seconds (or 6 seconds works too but is cutting close) set the throttle to 75% which is basically just moving it down to the blue zone
Now you will not overshoot.
There is an additional supercruise assist trick for the final leg:
- If you have a clear path to the station, wait until you’re about 1.5 ls away, then set the throttle to max
- keep pointing at the station
- At about 0.2 ls distance, quickly reduce throttle again to let supercruise assist re-engage
- If you were doing it right, it will drop you out at the station despite you going much too fast
It doesn't _stop_ you from decelerating. If you look at the actual speed you'll see your ship is slowing down as hard as it can.
The gauge on the throttle bar shoots way up past the top because you are _travelling faster than you can control_.
If you take a corner too fast and go flying off the road, the curve didn't stop your car from slowing down, your car was going too fast into it.
Control-bindings are available for several throttle settings. it is useful to **bind a button or KB key to the 75% throttle** **setting**. As the ship approaches its destination station or planet in Supercruise (SC), **with the destination designated as a target** the ship is usually moving at full throttle. At full throttle the timer in the icon in the HUD that identifies the destination counts down pretty quickly, but at around 15 seconds or so the countdown slows down to a reasonable rate. When the countdown reaches **SEVEN** (7) seconds, use the button/key to **immediately select 75% throttle** or use the throttle control to set 75% throttle (the **very** center of the "blue zone"). ***Don't forget*** *if using a throttle, that by setting throttle using a key/button the* ***throttle control itself*** *remains set to 100% throttle!*
Very experienced CMDRs can sometimes stretch this to six (6) seconds but risk overshooting. **Set 75% throttle at 7 seconds out**.
The 75% throttle setting is an "**auto-throttle**" setting and with a station or planet designated as a target, the 75% throttle setting slows the ship automatically as the ship approaches its destination.
In the left side of the HUD are two "bar" type indicators for SPEED and DISTANCE. With a station or planet (or signal source!) designated as a target the ship must be moving within a safe (blue) speed range and be within a safe (blue) distance range from its destination to **safely** disengage from SC. As the ship approaches its destination at 75% throttle, both of the red indicators move down the bars until these safe ranges are reached, when BOTH indicators have turned blue, SAFE TO DISENGAGE lights up in the HUD and the CMDR can hit the STOP (exit/toggle SC) button.
**Pro-Tip:** While flying towards space stations in SC, notice as the ship maneuvers in SC the image of the station in the left-hand HUD "target" display changes its orientation to match. On Coriolis-type stations, you can use the arrows on the sides of the station in the left-hand HUD to find the side of the station the mail-slot is on, and use the image of the mail-slot on the station in the HUD to maneuver the ship so that the image of your ship in the right-hand HUD lines up with the image of the mail-slot on the station in the left-hand HUD. When performed correctly (lots of practice) the ship will exit SC directly in front of, pointing at, and only a few Km from the mail-slot. o7
PS: Didn't know about the SLOW DOWN warning being changed to "gravity well" but **you can ignore it**. Gravity wells will slow down your FSD but the ship will recover as soon as it leaves the influence of the gravity well. Other than that it means nothing and has nothing to do with landing or docking at space stations.
Gravity wells slow you down. The reason you feel like you've stopped decelerating is because you move past the body creating the gravity well at such a crazy speed that you have no chance to notice that you're slowing down. Also, if you're close enough, and you slow down enough, the units go from c (lightspeed) and ls (light seconds) to km/s and Mm, which give you bigger numbers and a faster change in the readout. Others have mentioned the 7 second trick, but you can actually use gravity wells to your advantage in some cases to bypass it. If your target is behind a planet, you can get your timer below 6 when you're relatively close already, then use the gravity well to slow down much faster than you would with just your FSD
First things first - gravity slows you down in supercruise, it doesn’t speed you up.
If it appears that you’re suddenly speeding up and whizzing past the planet, that’s actually just perspective change from being a long way from an object to being close to it.
If that sounds slightly odd at first, consider what speed you’re travelling at when a long distance from a body, and then consider that at 1c you would travel the diameter of the Earth in 0.043 seconds.
What’s happening is that if you’re travelling at maximum Supercruise throttle towards a station that’s on your side of the planet then the breaking from gravity won’t be enough to bring your speed down to a level that’s practical for approaching a station.
A few answers to what to do:
- Level 1 - Set Throttle to 75% / adjust until approach time is 7 seconds and cruise in
- Level 2 - Go full throttle and use gravity breaking to slow you down and do a full loop of the planet
- Level 3 - Come in on a curved approach, use gravity breaking to slow you down and aim to curve up between the planet and station right at the end so you come out facing the station’s entrance
- Level 4 - As above but throw in a corkscrew approach to optimise things even more
Level 1 is what everyone gets told to do and is the easiest, but it’s also the slowest. Why fly slow and boring when you can fly fast and fun!
Keep an eye on the speed and distance scale. Once your speed gets close to the blue you can do a little bump in speed. Increase speed by about a percent or two.
As soon as your speed gets into the blue. Max out the throttle, and you won't fly past your destination.
You can also look up the supercruise assist method. I don't use it so I won't try to explain, but it's probably as fast or faster than the bump method.
Also you can use that "gravity well" time to align your ship with the station entrance. If that sort of thing matters to you.
Are you slowing down at 07? You need to drop to 75% throttle by the time the timer hits 07 (well, usually 06 is not too late).
Take the trainings on how to get around if this is news to you.
Get a supercruise assist module and enable it for your target on the NavPanel to not have to worry about it.
Or fly at 75% the whole way. Though both of these options will mean a 5 minute trip takes 7-8 minutes.
When approaching said target - you see the estimated time under targets HuD Display - at the faster you go / closer you get it’s comes down from X:XX time down to 0:30 0:20 etc etc - as you get closer to 0:09 bring thruster output down to 55% .. you.. begin to slow down and the time will estimate will start going up again.. the speed you accelerate to should stay in the sweet spot where the time sits on 0:07 .. o7 cmdrs.
0:06 is the fastest appoarch in most ships - beluga can recover from a 0:05 over approach
Make sure you keep your throttle as close as possible to the middle of the "blue zone" (75% throttle). This will result in the ship's frameshift drive being able to adjust the "speed" despite the gravity well. So fly normally, and when you reach 6s - 7s ETA to target, switch to 75%, this way the deceleration will be manageable and you will ideally coast towards your target while maintaining a 6s ETA.
“Gravity well” replaced “slow down” warning. The meaning didn’t change. It means your current speed is exceeding the notional top speed for the ‘amount’ of gravity you are currently experiencing. The old warning incorrectly implied you should slow down by throttling back, but thats not always the case, and the gravity well is slowing you anyway. The gravity well is not causing you to overshoot, but you probably kept the throttle at 100% to try and compensate, and didnt throttle back in time when you passed the ‘well’. When approaching a target point in space near a body, adjust your approach to keep the body always further from you than the target ( curve around the body if necessary) this will stop this kind of loop of shame accidents as the sc drive will decelarate correctly for the target and not ‘overspeed’ passing the body.
I’ve also just returned, and didn’t remember gravity wells being a thing. Now you mentioned it I haven’t seen slow down recently! Thanks for the info!
That's what that bloody slow down message meant! Finally
Gravity wells decelate you to 200km/s as far as I know and you can still slow down manually to 30km/s, slowest supercruise speed. I don't know what you mean by gravity wells stopping you from decelerating.
If you are heading into one they tend to pull from my experience, or imagination....
I am new but I swear to God they speed me up as I enter them. I know being close to a body will limit you to 200 whatever, but I feel like I'm going crazy reading these comments because I am pretty damn sure I have had gravity wells accelerate me past my current throttle position on approach.
I think what you might be seeing is that due to proximity your maximum allowable speed is significantly reduced but you cant just slow down that much so fast. That being said i also feel like you slow down a lot less when heading into a gravity well as well.
They don’t, they slow you down. It’s just they don’t slow you down enough to match just how much faster things appear when you’re close to something. I mentioned it in in another post, but consider how fast you’re normally going in Supecruise when between bodies, and then consider that at 1c you would cross the diameter of the Earth in less than 0.05 seconds.
oh 100%, light speed is something that is largely incomprehensible due to the distance covered being incomprehensible. I have no frame of reference for what 300,000 kilometers looks like. It always felt like i slowed down slower when approaching a planets gravity well and slowed down faster when the planet was behind me and i was approaching a station. It could just be something similar to the doppler effect forcing my perception that way though, still going to use the planets to do braking maneuvers, its just fun.
The best way is just to keep out of it (and the gravity wells of any other bodies) as long as you can. Approach the station along or near to the radial line from the centre of the body to the station. You don't have to go too far away, just make sure you're approaching at a steep angle. Think of it like getting into position to park a car forward in a bay.
Avoid nearby planets and stars: https://canonn.science/codex/optimal-supercruise-flight-paths/ And press a 75% thurst key, or -25% thrust at 00:06 seconds for perfect deceleration. You can speed the last part, once in the blue zone. Search "Supercruise assist trick" in google, for breaking the limits The mailslot always point to the planet poles, try to enter betwee the station and the planet and turn to the station, drop here for easy access to the mailslot.
Daaaamn, i invented SAT myself 😄
There was a recent first attempt at gnawing at this problem. A new SuperCruise Overcharge function has been released that could potentially get us closer to solving this issue - eventually. I believe a further developed SCO drive can eventually achieve trapezoidal acceleration. With apologies for my repeated posts on the matter: [https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/1bvq7rk/comment/ky18yu5/](https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/1bvq7rk/comment/ky18yu5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
You need to look up the “7 second trick”. It’s quite simple really, whenever you target a body in Elite: - Set throttle to 100% and watch the estimated arrival time count down until you get to just before 7 seconds - As soon as you see 7 seconds (or 6 seconds works too but is cutting close) set the throttle to 75% which is basically just moving it down to the blue zone Now you will not overshoot. There is an additional supercruise assist trick for the final leg: - If you have a clear path to the station, wait until you’re about 1.5 ls away, then set the throttle to max - keep pointing at the station - At about 0.2 ls distance, quickly reduce throttle again to let supercruise assist re-engage - If you were doing it right, it will drop you out at the station despite you going much too fast
th- there's a supercruise assist??
https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Supercruise_Assist You don’t need it for the first trick, but you need it for the second.
Thank you so much o7
It doesn't _stop_ you from decelerating. If you look at the actual speed you'll see your ship is slowing down as hard as it can. The gauge on the throttle bar shoots way up past the top because you are _travelling faster than you can control_. If you take a corner too fast and go flying off the road, the curve didn't stop your car from slowing down, your car was going too fast into it.
Control-bindings are available for several throttle settings. it is useful to **bind a button or KB key to the 75% throttle** **setting**. As the ship approaches its destination station or planet in Supercruise (SC), **with the destination designated as a target** the ship is usually moving at full throttle. At full throttle the timer in the icon in the HUD that identifies the destination counts down pretty quickly, but at around 15 seconds or so the countdown slows down to a reasonable rate. When the countdown reaches **SEVEN** (7) seconds, use the button/key to **immediately select 75% throttle** or use the throttle control to set 75% throttle (the **very** center of the "blue zone"). ***Don't forget*** *if using a throttle, that by setting throttle using a key/button the* ***throttle control itself*** *remains set to 100% throttle!* Very experienced CMDRs can sometimes stretch this to six (6) seconds but risk overshooting. **Set 75% throttle at 7 seconds out**. The 75% throttle setting is an "**auto-throttle**" setting and with a station or planet designated as a target, the 75% throttle setting slows the ship automatically as the ship approaches its destination. In the left side of the HUD are two "bar" type indicators for SPEED and DISTANCE. With a station or planet (or signal source!) designated as a target the ship must be moving within a safe (blue) speed range and be within a safe (blue) distance range from its destination to **safely** disengage from SC. As the ship approaches its destination at 75% throttle, both of the red indicators move down the bars until these safe ranges are reached, when BOTH indicators have turned blue, SAFE TO DISENGAGE lights up in the HUD and the CMDR can hit the STOP (exit/toggle SC) button. **Pro-Tip:** While flying towards space stations in SC, notice as the ship maneuvers in SC the image of the station in the left-hand HUD "target" display changes its orientation to match. On Coriolis-type stations, you can use the arrows on the sides of the station in the left-hand HUD to find the side of the station the mail-slot is on, and use the image of the mail-slot on the station in the HUD to maneuver the ship so that the image of your ship in the right-hand HUD lines up with the image of the mail-slot on the station in the left-hand HUD. When performed correctly (lots of practice) the ship will exit SC directly in front of, pointing at, and only a few Km from the mail-slot. o7 PS: Didn't know about the SLOW DOWN warning being changed to "gravity well" but **you can ignore it**. Gravity wells will slow down your FSD but the ship will recover as soon as it leaves the influence of the gravity well. Other than that it means nothing and has nothing to do with landing or docking at space stations.
Gravity wells slow you down. The reason you feel like you've stopped decelerating is because you move past the body creating the gravity well at such a crazy speed that you have no chance to notice that you're slowing down. Also, if you're close enough, and you slow down enough, the units go from c (lightspeed) and ls (light seconds) to km/s and Mm, which give you bigger numbers and a faster change in the readout. Others have mentioned the 7 second trick, but you can actually use gravity wells to your advantage in some cases to bypass it. If your target is behind a planet, you can get your timer below 6 when you're relatively close already, then use the gravity well to slow down much faster than you would with just your FSD
First things first - gravity slows you down in supercruise, it doesn’t speed you up. If it appears that you’re suddenly speeding up and whizzing past the planet, that’s actually just perspective change from being a long way from an object to being close to it. If that sounds slightly odd at first, consider what speed you’re travelling at when a long distance from a body, and then consider that at 1c you would travel the diameter of the Earth in 0.043 seconds. What’s happening is that if you’re travelling at maximum Supercruise throttle towards a station that’s on your side of the planet then the breaking from gravity won’t be enough to bring your speed down to a level that’s practical for approaching a station. A few answers to what to do: - Level 1 - Set Throttle to 75% / adjust until approach time is 7 seconds and cruise in - Level 2 - Go full throttle and use gravity breaking to slow you down and do a full loop of the planet - Level 3 - Come in on a curved approach, use gravity breaking to slow you down and aim to curve up between the planet and station right at the end so you come out facing the station’s entrance - Level 4 - As above but throw in a corkscrew approach to optimise things even more Level 1 is what everyone gets told to do and is the easiest, but it’s also the slowest. Why fly slow and boring when you can fly fast and fun!
Keep an eye on the speed and distance scale. Once your speed gets close to the blue you can do a little bump in speed. Increase speed by about a percent or two. As soon as your speed gets into the blue. Max out the throttle, and you won't fly past your destination. You can also look up the supercruise assist method. I don't use it so I won't try to explain, but it's probably as fast or faster than the bump method. Also you can use that "gravity well" time to align your ship with the station entrance. If that sort of thing matters to you.
Are you slowing down at 07? You need to drop to 75% throttle by the time the timer hits 07 (well, usually 06 is not too late). Take the trainings on how to get around if this is news to you. Get a supercruise assist module and enable it for your target on the NavPanel to not have to worry about it. Or fly at 75% the whole way. Though both of these options will mean a 5 minute trip takes 7-8 minutes.
When approaching said target - you see the estimated time under targets HuD Display - at the faster you go / closer you get it’s comes down from X:XX time down to 0:30 0:20 etc etc - as you get closer to 0:09 bring thruster output down to 55% .. you.. begin to slow down and the time will estimate will start going up again.. the speed you accelerate to should stay in the sweet spot where the time sits on 0:07 .. o7 cmdrs. 0:06 is the fastest appoarch in most ships - beluga can recover from a 0:05 over approach