There's one more setting change that I forgot to I mention! In Game settings, change "Pilot-Velocity Indicator" setting to "Always On". This will ensure that your Velocity Vector Indicator is always visible.
I've been playing for years, use decoupled frequently, especially for landing. I never knew putting the landing gear down "freezes" your vector though! That is supremely handy, definitely gonna make use of this. Thank you!
I was the same way when I discovered this! I've been meaning to make a video about it for the better part of a year but am only now finally comfortable enough with editing etc to attempt it.
SAME, OP. Extremely useful info. @AmoredGenie I'm on board with the term "vector mode." I'll help you make it a thing. Thanks for the tip about gear freezing vector in decoupled!
So I've been using this technique for quite a while now, but that tip about coming in hot and just smashing brake is such good advice. There's been a few times when I've gone decoupled last moment and totally forgot to put my landing gear down haha. But yeah I totally agree that this should be a third mode that you can toggle independent of landing gear.
Glad it's helpful! Continuing to hold space brake while the gear is in transition and while you get your axes centered up is so useful. Otherwise, I have a tendancy to climb immediately as I'm still holding a residual vertical thrust input from countering gravity on the way in.
I’m new to Star Citizen, so I’m going to use your techniques because after upgrading my original starter ship the Avenger Titan to the Cutlass Black, I see a big difference in the overall handling of the 2 ships. Coming from Elite Dangerous where the ships handled basically the same, I realized quickly that the Cutlass is a beast when compared to the Avenger! Thanks for the video!!!
I started with Aurora LN then the Avenger, then Cuttie then added a Connie! All great ships! I like the green displays of the Cuttie...soothing for the eye...
Years, and I never knew the break with boost feature - always felt the space break was fairly weak. Gonna have fun trying this out, appreciate the guide! Also kind of digging the camo cutty, I might have to get mine a new paintjob!
Holy shit I’ve been flying for years and have never found out about this flight-mode. I’ve been doing full manual landings on dual sticks and making that as smooth as possible, and this will only up my game even more thanks!
Just made the settings changes, took my RAFT over to New Babbage and man, it makes a nice difference -- thanks for the video, really well-done and very helpful!
Original kickstarter backer and have been playing every version of release. i did not realize this existed.... i hope they implement a way to use this without needing the landing gear down....
I'm always like pointing to the ground and at the last second in align and hit it ... Have to watch the speed but most ships can be landed fairly hard without troubles if that's the landing gears hitting. No need to paranoy about landing, just don't hit the ground with something that's not made for that
I really wish Star Citizen had "parking cameras" you could have visible feeds from on the cockpit displays, like when you call someone or an NPC contacts you. Could also have feeds from the cargo bay and current turret views. Would be even better if you could add more screens to your cockpit rig, customize it in-game.
I use speed limiter to gradually slow movement on landing approaches. But this decoupled drift could allow for more spectacular maneuvers, like turning around before touchdown.
@@ArmoredGenie New hangar landing challengers for this technique arrived: Spirit and Syulen. 😅 But the Syulen in general is a ship this technique will be appreciated for, considering its upright landing style.
This is incredible and I am going to use it to line up vertical hangars from way away and just slide on in. Now we need space brake to actually work on the weird physics when your landing gear is touched down. Wheeled gear especially. It's like all your retro thrust disappears.
Very cool and thank you for sharing. I have used this technic before since I am generally in decouple mode when landing. Plus, decoupling at time gives you far greater control over your ship if you know how to use it. Plus, it's very useful in a dogfight since you can dance circles around other ships. Most of the time other players in a dogfight think an enemy is jousting with them without ever realizing they are actually in decouple mode and not realizing they are the one preforming the jousting.
I agree! Decoupled often allows much better control and gives you a more accurate feel for how a ship is performing. Coupled definitely still has its place as well. For example, in dogfights, when you are on the defensive, being coupled normally makes your pip less smooth/predictable for your attacker.
Sort of depends about the jousting. You can definitely tell when they're jousting when you start reversing and they're flying straight toward you (if they do this while I'm in the Freelancer I just hammer them with tons of fire). But I notice jousting is done mostly by the M50s and Buccaneers. The Cutlass, Valkyrie and Hurricane are prone to orbit and focus fire. With HOSAS it's also easy to orbit without disabling decoupled mode.
decouple needs a lot of practice and getting used to. especially if you are with mouse and keyboard because the control can be stresful. but its a really fun method of flying and it looks cool too.
This looks like fun. I always just use L-Alt and Scroll Down to smoothly land and maybe takeoff because I can't afford the fancy hardware, but this looks like it could be plenty useful. Thanks for the vid!
been playing for weeks and this is great info to have for landing and cutting down my exposed time in sketchy areas come in hot do what i got to do and roll!
Pretty usefull, i´ve been playing for many years, and never realized that when u are decoupled and the landing gear is out it counters gravity, maybe because most of the time i use decoupled in space, but still good info ;)
I love you. I've been pulling up landing gear in the hangar and wondering why the gear changed the ship flight. I thought it was just something with the hangars gravity system.... i had no idea there was a 3rd mode. You revolutionised my flying. They absolutely need to make this a toggle like decoupled mode and vtol and not have it tied to landing gear deployment.
Honestly the first time I have seen this technique and I have been playing for years lol. I gotta up my game it seems I am now a believer in vector hold mode.
I'm a fan of decoupled mode for many years and pretty much always land (and fly) like this. There was no need to lower your landing gear to retain vector until some patches ago (probably after the failed helicopter mode) - same in space/hangar/landing pads, decoupled mode didn't care about gravity.
Cool landings. Very cool skin on your ship. I am a old time SC player i am on a break until server meshing happens and they add more things to do. Last time i played BH was broken trading was broken smuggling was broken. Bunkers were predictable and boring. I don't want to mine and have no mining ship. So my Avenger, Cutlass Red and Taurus and all in long term storage at the space dock.
returning player after years. a coworker gave me his old joystick setup so im trying to land more smoothly with that. i think this was helpful because i want to be able to land with vtol on vertical hangar bays but if im not forward enough i have to switch from coupled/decoupled mode to prioritize which direction my thrusters move me which doesn't seem natural. the first time i didnt realize why i was falling or moving forward and ended up crashing lol. still working out the kinks
I fly most times decoupled.... but there is another way to land very smooth, if you don't want to use decouple: Just fly to the position where you want to land, than lower your thruster power. So you have a good looking and slow landing.
I was literally just thinking that while watching this video. The upcoming patch after 3.18 (either 3.19 or 4.0) will feature AI rescue/passenger missions, so dropships are going to become HUGELY useful in those scenarios, and I can already imagine some of the will probably include rescuing passengers in hot zones or hostile environments where rapid evacs will be mandatory.
Can you add a video expanding on the "tactical insertion" method you mentioned 04:20 ? I've been working on multiple insertion techniques myself but have been struggling. TYVM
This is also handy for launching from a ship hangar like on the carrack or 890j. Mothership can be at speed while you launch. Just has to hold steady for a moment until you get fully clear of the ship. Did this plenty of times with snubs inside the carrack.
Great point! Yeah I've used it for landing in moving Carrack for sure. I think I must have used it taking off too but I didn't even realize it. Now that I think about it, I must have, or I would have become a bug splat on the cartography deck when I left the hangar's physics.
I've gotten out of the habit of it, but I used to land like this all the time. Except I don't have spacebrake set to use boost. I find it looks a little smoother without it and I've got the boost button under my thumb if I need it. It really seems to impress people when you land all in one smooth motion instead of hovering over the pad and strafing around before finally slamming down into the pad. I've even used it when landing in hangers from a steep dive, but you've got to trust what you're doing a bit more.
There is a third setting I would change that I don't think you mentioned. This is also in the game settings tab, set the velocity indicator to always visible.
Useful information. I've started working on my landings to get them nice and smooth but I wasn't aware of this. I believe it was mentioned on Reddit but I wasn't following the impact/usefulness. Thanks 👍🏽
I like that I’ve been playing for a while but I have not used this method I do use duel flight sticks and a switch box. I will probably try that for combat landing I like how fast you were able to slow down!!! Thank La for the vid!!!
This is a good tip! I wish you could this without putting down the landing gear so you could pull off more cinematic landings by putting the landing gear down at the last moment before touchdown.
Couldn't agree more! You can sort of get away with more cinematic landings at space stations as decoupled in space behaves almost the same as vector hold in gravity for a landing. Just have to time the gear being fully down right when you hit the local gravity of the pad for a smooth transition to vector hold mode. Almost pulled it off in the Scorpius/defender clips.
I have three levels of quality manual landing, "Champagne" (not a ripple in the glass), "Beer" (I can fly fine Officer) and "Mezcal" (I got wormed), but all three you walk away from. ;-) When I was first playing (2.5 - 2.6) I could land and launch any ship (inc. a Reclaimer), first try like a BOSS, that's until CIG upgraded the flight engine.
With the next flight model update coming with the engineering/physicalized damage, how do you think it will affect your landing skills (especially with the ability to crash without exploding)?
Good question, I don't know, but hope I can improve so I'm assured in myself of a majority of Champagne landings and confidence in my "Hot" landings. ;-)
In 3.18, It's going to be awesome when you can whip out the multi tool and repair the damage on the spot after you have a slightly rough landing but don't destroy anything major. Can't wait!
I've been accomplishing smooth landings in my 600i in coupled mode with a forward vector for years using the acceleration limiter to simply lower maximum thrust. I've only used this mode you're talking about to be able to momentarily decouple without having to manually resist gravity. I'll try your method out and see how it goes.
That's definitely another valid technique! A lot of people don't know about the acceleration limiter either. Not to be confused with speed limiter. Let me know how it goes!
Oh, so THAT'S why sometimes the ship just falls like a stone in a station hangar when decoupled and other times is smooth as butter - landing gear. Huh. Sweet.
I love using this mode, but didn't know it had a name! Thank you, nice video. The real reason I'm commenting... how are you able to record 3rd person view simultaneously?
Well this is awesome to know, thanks for sharing, gonna give it a try later this week. Do u mind sharing also how u did the picture in picture, I'd love to be able to get a second view like that
Cool. I love the addon to decoupled flying, this is very welcome. Vectors and predictable descents are both nice to perform and nice to look at. What is you opinion on space brake though, it's not really a thing with any existing vehicles and seem to be more "use to win" than "adds to immersion".
I think it's realistic that we would have it if we could. If we had the tech to have thrusters that gave us this kind of speed and precision, it would probably make sense that there was a brake control that used the computer to try and freeze the movement of the ship. Many current drones have this feature. The problem would be the G forces on the crew. For a good balance of fun and realism, I think it's ok.
@@frederickbastien3878 A little harsh I think. To be fair, air brakes don't decelerate aircraft like that. Only thrust reversers do that. I think it's a valid question. Also, designing something made to move that needs more than one button press to stop is not the same as designing something and giving it no way to stop.
I find that space brake isn't really a "use to win" feature, as it requires a TON of skill to use effectively. Usually I use the space brake as a way to kill any thrust, and then use the reverse thrusters to slow down or try to bring a ship to a halt. The space brake + reverse thrust technique varies per ship, as different ship sizes with varying aerodynamics behave VASTLY different from one another depending on if you're in atmosphere or in space.
how do you get the spacebrake to be so strong? for the past year or so i feel like the spacebrake got weaker, unless its just because i usually use a bigger ship and it doesn't work as good on a large ship
It could be that you didn't change the spacebrake setting that I showed in the video. Space brake used to always engage boost by default but a while ago they changed it to default off. You have to manually turn that setting on now.
@@ArmoredGenie i like more the manual boost. So you can make little brakes (good, if you want to fly close to an spacestation in decouple. If you need a hardbrake, just click the boost button while you are pressing the brake.
Been playing for years and never noticed this. It does however feel/look like a bug in the physics of the flight model. Is there any real physical reason, the landing gear down, would make the change in flight characteristics?
No, you're right. The gear shouldn't do anything that effects a ship like this. It is just a symptom of multiple things happening with one keybind. I think it is an intended mode, it's just bound to the gear for now. Kind of like ships with folding wings etc. Scorpius is first ship to have a dedicated "transform" button so I think we will see some more kybinds soon™.
I don't even know what Coupled and De-Coupled Mode is in the first place. I just land with the default mode on ships. How do I change between them by default? Or do I have to change a setting to do that?
