Orbital Circles & Speed Issue

[Myrm]

Hi.

I have two questions please.


1. Orbital Circles

When in super drive I always see what appears to be yellow-ish circles around planets on which various stations appear to be orbiting on, in a horizontal plane, and blue circles on a vertical plane. What is the purpose of these?

2. Speed issues in super drive

Sometimes when I get the "Slow Down" alert I reduce my speed and see the blue needle-like speed indicator drop but the ship suddenly starts to speed up until it reaches its peak, then it drops. This makes me fly past my intended destination. Why does this happen?

Thank you.

[Ameena]

The yellow circles show you the orbital path of stuff - that's why you can usually see a whole bunch of yellow lines across your screen when you turn away from a star after arriving in a system - it's the orbital paths of all the planets (and other stars, if applicable) in the system. The blue circles seem to resemble the "tunnel" in Frontier that you flew down toward your target, only in this case they seem to emanate from a planet rather than the orbiting space station that is my actual target. I'm guessing it might be the "thing of strongest gravitational pull in the direction you're currently heading" but I don't actually know for sure.

I get the "slow down" thing too, sometimes, even when I've been managing my speed (putting it right in the middle of the blue section as I start getting close to my destination) as normal like I always do when approaching a space station. It's more of a minor annoyance than anything else but it'd be nice to know what causes it. Sometimes when I'm getting close to my destnation and am lining myself up between the planet and the space station (so I'm facing as near as possible to the station entrance when I drop into normal space), I'll see an NPC rectangle zoom past me and alter course to fly back again so I'll deliberately speed up so as to avoid an interdiction - because I'm really close to my destination by that point I usually haven't built up enough speed to overshoot before I get the "Safe to disengage" message (or whatever it says, I've seen it a million times and I can't remember it off the top of my head ), but it has happened once or twice. Still, I'd rather have to turn around and reposition myself than get interdicted and have to run away from that and then turn around and reposition myself .

[Flip]

1. The blue circles are just there to give you a feel that you're moving forward. If you notice, a blue ring expands in size, disappears, and is replaced by another. Yellow circles indicate other objects' orbits.

2. Sometimes the sounds gives you the impression that your ship is accelerating when it's actually decelerating. But in the case you describe, it doesn't decelerate quickly enough. The easiest is to bind a key or a button to 75% engine, and engage that when the HUD tells you that you're between 10 and 6 seconds away. The autopilot will then do all the work for you.

Edit: ninja'd.

[Myrm]

KK.

Thank you Ameena and Flip

[HAMM3R]

As far as I know, the "slow down" is because of the gravitational well of a nearby stellar object, eg. a planet. When you get into one you start to slow down and once you're clear you'll gain speed again.

[M. Kowalsky]

2. Sometimes the sounds gives you the impression that your ship is accelerating when it's actually decelerating. But in the case you describe, it doesn't decelerate quickly enough. The easiest is to bind a key or a button to 75% engine, and engage that when the HUD tells you that you're between 10 and 6 seconds away. The autopilot will then do all the work for you.

I've recently found, (after 1.2 maybe) that the rule of 75% / 7s is far from a sure thing any more.
These days, it seems I'm overshooting the target more often than not. I've tried to up to 75% / 8s then 10s and it still happens.
I'm going to try 50% / 7s next...

There's also a 3rd type of circle lines, which seem to correspond to the gravitational pull of large celestial objects like stars and gas giants (I'd imagine it would be on all bodies but I've never been close enough to one to notice) and which will see you crash out of SuperCruise if you get within it. (Or so that's how I interpret it).

[Flip]

2. Sometimes the sounds gives you the impression that your ship is accelerating when it's actually decelerating. But in the case you describe, it doesn't decelerate quickly enough. The easiest is to bind a key or a button to 75% engine, and engage that when the HUD tells you that you're between 10 and 6 seconds away. The autopilot will then do all the work for you.

I've recently found, (after 1.2 maybe) that the rule of 75% / 7s is far from a sure thing any more.
These days, it seems I'm overshooting the target more often than not. I've tried to up to 75% / 8s then 10s and it still happens.
I'm going to try 50% / 7s next...

Strange, it still works for me (when I'm not checking my email or the forum and overshoot my destination without even noticing).

There's also a 3rd type of circle lines, which seem to correspond to the gravitational pull of large celestial objects like stars and gas giants (I'd imagine it would be on all bodies but I've never been close enough to one to notice) and which will see you crash out of SuperCruise if you get within it. (Or so that's how I interpret it).

Yes, that's right. It appears around stars and planets, doesn't resize, and indicates the minimum distance you can get to that body before being pulled out of SC for being too close.

[Cmdr Kharma]

I turned all them fings off.....

Bloody confusing if you ask me......

[Myrm]

I didn't realise you could turn them off

[Flip]

I didn't realise you could turn them off

That can be done from the Fonction tab of the right panel.