Why does the ship tell you to 'slow down' AFTER you can't actually slow down?!

[stummies]

On topic, I personally always thought it was telling me I had to slow down, thought I kind of understood why. Basically it's because the max speed decreases based on how close you are to your target in SC (you can watch it drop even though you aren't doing that yourself). What happens is you end up not being able to slow down because your ship has a limit on how fast it can decelerate, adding in the fact that the ship will reduce you max speed the closer you get... you end up in a situation where you can't decelerate faster than your max speed drop due to the proximity of your target. In this case, it is telling me that I am going too fast.

My previous post I explained that if you wait until "6" seconds and go to 75% throttle you will coast in perfectly, this is because it hits an equilibrium where you are slowing down at the same rate your max speed reduces. Think of it like belly surfing in an ocean with your max speed being the wave.

Not sure if that makes any sense.

[UnmarkedBoxcar]

On topic, I personally always thought it was telling me I had to slow down, thought I kind of understood why. Basically it's because the max speed decreases based on how close you are to your target in SC (you can watch it drop even though you aren't doing that yourself). What happens is you end up not being able to slow down because your ship has a limit on how fast it can decelerate, adding in the fact that the ship will reduce you max speed the closer you get... you end up in a situation where you can't decelerate faster than your max speed drop due to the proximity of your target. In this case, it is telling me that I am going too fast.

This is kind of the same thing I've always thought/noticed.

What I do if I'm being inattentive and this happens when I'm trying to cruise into a station is just bring the nose of my ship down until I'm traveling perpendicular to where I want to go. This quite often brings you out of whatever gravity well you've wandered into, and allows you to slow down more quickly without overshooting your target.

Little things... I mean. There's nothing really horrible about overshooting.

Unless you're aiming for a Nav Beacon and the star is behind it.

[Gorf]

The way I looked at it, early in the game:

You have a variable gearbox, which pretty much goes from 30km/s at 0 throttle to infinity (or so big it doesn't really make sense).

You don't have control of your "gears" - control is dictated by your speed, and proximity to celestial objects.

If your throttle setting and current "gear" should have you travelling more slowly than your current rate, you get the "slow down" message.

This explains why you sometimes get the message when you skim past a planet on your approach to a station, even if you'd set your throttle to 75% when more than 6 seconds from the station drop zone.