Panets and Docking Rings.

[Unseelie]

About the angle thing, and organizing paths, etc: Ships are equipped with navigational computers, would -not- burn up in atmospheres (though hitting at an angle likely to bounce the ship could cause a lot of impact damage) and atmospheres/planets are rather large. If anything, docking rings increase the number of likey collisions, as they focus the travel of ships. Even so, one would expect the planetary spaceports, rather than orbital facilities, to arrange traffic, as there's not much traffic in space.

The landing cenematic shows ships landing on their own power, from great height. Watch it. Hundreds of meters, at least, your ship comes in from over the top of the Freelancer future cities (which I assume have rather large towers). As far as the energy they cost...HFuel..nuclear. Mox, nuclear. Oil? (wtf in general, actually. Internal combustion doesn't make that much sense for powering -cars-)

The safety of any criminal base, or any base at all, depends a lot on it being deep, and it being armored. Or it being defended.

WARNING: Do not attempt planetary landing without using a Docking Ring.
A Docking Ring is part of an orbital elevator system invented by Ageira Technologies. Through the use of super strong crystalline polymers and frictionless bearings, Docking Rings assist the smooth atmospheric entry and exit of interstellar vessels with landing capability.

This infocard...does not imply, to me, a space elevator. It implies a gate, at the doors of atmosphere...which is silly.


Anyway, I had this thought after talking to the Bucanneer blokes, about how they had nowhere to land but trafalgar. Everything in space is claimed by largeish factions, and rather than suggesting a bunch of neutral stations...I'd like to see planet landing make a bit more sense.

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[Cellulanus]

And pirates can have bases on planets for sure. It's not like they can really scan them and see that they are RED PIRATES. pirates are organized, they would use false IDs and they would find some ways to conceal where they are actually going. Or maybe they wold be some known company that is actually pirate owned without anyone knowing it.

If they're using a false ID and IFF with a non Pirate only ship in which they could be IDed, then why wouldn't they just use the docking ring to get to the planet as I believe I stated that pirates would do earlier.

Also the ships would have to dodge right past police and military patrols every time they launched, and if they have the means of fooling police and navy into thinking they are someone else why don't they leave them on all of the time?

[DiscoveryAccount]

Ok, I don't remember saying anything about using or not docking rings. In my example, it suggests that there are no gate lanes because that's what we were taking about.

Anyway, there's no need to prove that piracy is more than possible because in real life there are criminals and they have no problem smuggling illegal good one way or another, or having HQs or anything else.

I don't really get your "leave them on" logic sorry. Explain what you're trying to say.

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[Unseelie]

I'd put the undock inside the planet, to avoid having people run right out into the 'front'. So they can turn around, and fly out through the back. (hitboxes don't work both ways. We can fly through the inner sides of them).

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[AdamantineFist]

I'd put the undock inside the planet, to avoid having people run right out into the 'front'. So they can turn around, and fly out through the back. (hitboxes don't work both ways. We can fly through the inner sides of them).

I'm assuming we're removing the death-zones, then? After all, I think you'd die in there if you don't. Also, it depends on what is done. If we use the "docking buoy" idea (which I think would work well enough), we'd just put a couple dock/undock points on each planet. But yeah, if it's gonna be just a no-ring scenario, that would work quite well.

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[Bear]

does anyone still use the docking rings, I personally just use the mouring fixture cause it provides insta dock without the boring wait of the docking ring.

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[DiscoveryAccount]

I do use them because I like to land on the planet.. and rings don't seem right for smaller ships

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[reavengitair]

I use mooring fixtures.

It saves you when youre being raped by nomads and corsairs..

[bluntpencil2001]

It just is. Just ignore it.

Trying to apply real-life science to it is silly.

This is not hard science fiction.

If it was, we wouldn't have sound in space, we wouldn't have FTL travel, we wouldn't cross star systems in a few minutes.

It's an orbital elevator. Whatever the hell that means. Who cares? It doesn't matter. Knowing how our ships' engines actually work is less important than the colour of flame we can see coming out the back end.

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[Horon]

Ive found it odd that out of all the places on these planets, there is only one "base" on the planet.

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While being quite funny, your sig was the biggest one i've ever seen so far. No more than 700x250 please. ~utrack
http://pastebin.com/SYQXBufs