Landing on Other Planets

Hello again. Voraz here!

Landing on other planets is something you will do quite often in this game. It is dangerous, especially if you don't have good enough thrusters, or you spent all your fuel just to get there. Crashing into a planet at too high of a speed will break or even completely shatter your ship, and that is generally something you don't want to happen.

It is important to keep in mind that some of the celestial objects have extraordinarily strong fields. Landing safely in such fields with deficient thrusters often requires you trying to orbit the planet/celestial object.

Also, each field has a specific range (unrealistic in the real physics world) where gravity suddenly kicks in. You can kind of "see" the gravitational field too. The space within the field gradually gets brighter and brighter as you get close to the planet, though gravity will kick in before you can really notice it. (this table is based on experiments in game, so the numbers are approximations) As a general rule, the more important modules are on planets that are either distant and hard to reach, hard to find (the Super Solar Panel on the invisible Niribu) or a planet that is difficult to land on. Saturn, for example, is hard to land safely on unless you manage to slow down enough, and if you're not paying attention as you're fast flying to it, its high gravity and big size makes it a bit harder to avoid a bad collision. Having good thrusters is important in this game. Also, a lot of these gravitational fields are so weak that you can basically ignore them, especially since by the point you reach Pluto, you've already got some Super Thrusters.

You'll get the hang of it, so this article's main useful info is this: if you find yourself approaching a planet too quickly, try thrusting to the side (if it's a small enough planet) to avoid a bad collision, instead of trying to directly negate your velocity.

That's all for now.

BEWARE THE GREAT SPACE PIRATE!