Hello Witchettygrub.

Thats a new one on me,Ive had the add ship destroyed by the docking computer but never every one. Inless some one else has an idea the best place to ask about it would be on the Russian Elit games forum.

With most of the smaller ships you do tend to sink into the ground when landing at planetside starports (an altitude of zero is often below the visible ground), but you should still be able to land without getting damaged, at least in manual mode. The autopilot can be quite unreliable when it comes to landing on planets so it is best to speed up time by one level to instantly dock.

But if you prefer doing your landing manually as I do, you need to remember to manually lower your landing gear. Also, unless the terrain around the starport is completely flat, keeping your craft level as you land can be a bit of a challenge. Btw, if you are using the Saker, it's actually a good idea to point the nose down slightly as you land because if its pointing up a bit, the bulbous thruster cone on the back of that thing can hit the ground before your landing gear does, and your hull will get damaged.

Yes, the bug where ships sink into the landing pad at some spaceports is a well known one. It's also unlikely to be fixed now that development on FFED3D has stopped.

At the risk of upsetting you, you have got atmospheric shielding, I presume? 😯

Uh oh, one for the "Typical Elite Quotes" thread on the Frontier Forum Steve? 😕

Thanks for the replies!

I am using the Saker as loaded at the start of the game; if a do nothing and launch the ships gain altitude then decend as expected, then the ships sink below ground & then thrust back up all by themselves...and so on. When on autopilot landing the ships will almost flip over just as they are about to touch down, and space station approaches are also well out of line. I have tried Old Curie for the Wiccan Ware mission, Turner Town & Argent station, all with no luck. 🙄

Seems this is present even in JJFFE standalone as well & the bug is therefore inherited by the FFED3D "front end". Could it be a collision detection bug, Direct X problem or maybe my PC is just too fast for it? Kind of a game ruiner when you can't land or dock 🙁

very uncommon behave, imho.

i checked it quick to see what could be behind, i have no idea!

do you engage autopilot to land dock very late? then it would be offens, the program turns the ship "headover" first to line up this needs at least ~5000m height. docking on orbiters happens the same? what kind of machine and os you are using?

dx version? but i can't really see a clue behind.

i tried a quick landing at hope with the saker in ffed3d and ffe(dos-box), but both worked out fine. i used no time accel. to compare, usually i did when docking/landing with autopilot, like steve mentioned it's sometimes "saver" (old FE2 wisdom).

it seems that it is a problem of you alone, or you like just to set us up? 🙄

they do sink below ground sometimes, yes, but that shouldn't harm your ship, collision is detected by planets "real" surface not by the buildings, usually you can fly through all buildings in ffe. height is inconsistent in ffe because of the terrain and it's impossible to fit the cities "plane" terrain to the planets "curved" at all.

i will put your question on the elite-games.ru forum, let's see what they mention.

maybe its rotten MS OS, you use win7? they don't wan't users to play old games or use old softs, guess they would like if we take our money and bring it to them right after earning it!