To all SSC Station occupants
Thank you for the donations over the past year (2024), it is much appreciated. I am still trying to figure out how to migrate the forums to another community software (probably phpbb) but in the meantime I have updated the forum software to the latest version. SSC has been around a while so their is some very long time members here still using the site, thanks for making SSC home and sorry I haven't been as vocal as I should be in the forums I will try to improve my posting frequency.
Thank you again to all of the members that do take the time to donate a little, it helps keep this station functioning on the outer reaches of space.
-D1-
Please do use this thread to introduce any extreme sports in which you participate in the Pioneer universe.
In-universe sports only, please. The more dangerous, the more exciting, the better.
Unpowered Landing from Orbit
Officially, now, the first extreme sport in Pioneer. The idea originated with s20dan, who performed the first unpowered landing from orbit on Venus.
Right, here's the general gist of the sport, to differentiate it from any that other people come up with which might be similar.
I fly to the planet in question using the autopilot to enter low orbit. I then execute a single burn in manual thrust mode (usually with the engine pointed in the direction of travel, the X on the hud) which will cause the vehicle's orbit to decay such that it will intercept the atmosphere. After that burn, there is absolutely no thruster use at all except for rotating the vehicle. A successful descent should end in the vehicle being in the "Landed" state on the surface, ready to take off using F5. Bouncing around on the surface without landing happens to me a lot, and I consider these to be failures to land, even though I get to live.
Some tips:
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[*:taxdphyo]Venus can be done in an Eagle MkI. You can do that right from the game start, without even ditching equipment.
[*:taxdphyo]The lighter your vehicle, the lower your terminal velocity, and the less damage the ground will do when it comes up to be your friend.
[*:taxdphyo]The lightest ship in the game right now is the Talon Military Interceptor. You'll need to remove its hyperdrive for minimum weight.
[*:taxdphyo]The length of that single burn, and the resulting speed, is really the result of trial and error. With a low Venus orbit, burning until about about 6km/s is a good value, but you can go slower. in my experience, the higher your initial speed, the further you travel before entry, the flatter your entry angle, and the longer you spend in the atmosphere. This leads to a lower impact speed.
[*:taxdphyo]Don't forget atmospheric shielding. You'll feel really silly if you do.
[*:taxdphyo]You do need an atmosphere. Don't even bother trying this on the Moon.
[*:taxdphyo]Oh, yeah - wheels down helps.
If you want a Talon, but can't find one, typing this into the Lua console will get you one if you're docked:
If you're in a remote system, you can lose your hyperdrive by typing these two lines into the console:
Game.player:RemoveEquip(myhyperdrive)
Don't forget to jettison any unused fuel. Every tonne makes a difference.
It's not a competitive sport as such, but for any given planet the challenge is emerging with the least damage. Taking the Talon down to Venus should be fruitful in that respect. I haven't tried shields on macho grounds, but I imagine that they're worth the additional weight. Perhaps there can be separate classes for shielded and unshielded drops.
Here are the two videos I have already posted so far. First, Venus with the starting Eagle MkI:
and then Saturn, with a striped-down Talon:
Enjoy. Feel free to post your own Unpowered Landing from Orbit videos, or to come up with your own extreme sports!
😮 I shot down an imperial courier with a viper .....
is the right place to say it? 
it was tough .... But I landed healthy!
Question .... I can publish still images extracted from the game?
😀 😀 😀 grazie Brianetta!
Please don't thank me... I don't think that combat is a sport. (-:
war is not a sport. but the fighting and the game are.
True. Here was war. 🙄
But ships are forced to explode? Would be enough to bring down! 😛
But, I would land between the buildings. I think I can! 😉
Some suggestions not combat related
Star Grazing
In Frontier (if you got your speed and approach just right) you could orbit Sirius within its accretion disk, in real time at phenomenal speed due to the very high gravity and rotation of the star. Perhaps that could be an option in future release ? Bloody hard though to get back out again from such a deep gravity well. 😕
Beggar's Canyon and Scaring Office Drones
On some worlds with cool canyons its fun to see how fast you can go and still remain with the canyon walls. Same goes for dense city blocks 😈
Spaghetti Monster Baiting
These curious things still pop up from time to time, I do hope they remain someplace even when the game is "finished" as its nice to have something unknowable out there somewhere in the dark. I tried landing on one once............. 😳
Sirius B still offers this opportunity, being a white dwarf. My closest near-circular orbit was very rapid indeed (a couple of minutes to go around it). Since we have magic reactionless engines which require no propellant, escaping is easy enough - just keep accelerating into the direction of travel, and you'll climb back out.
One extreme sport that the devs were thinking about on IRC was a stellar nudge; the idea is that you actually hit the surface of a star, and sustain damage from it, without being killed. This isn't impossible!
We'll need to come up with new ideas once atmospheres (including stellar ones) start to damage ships the way that they should.
Sports in the afternoon ...
1 land between the buildings of the city .... (display of some defect): (
2 Slowly landing vertically on the roof of a building large enough .... (Collision)
3 to slalom between the holes of a spaceport with ring ... (Funny):)
4 Exit of hyperspace and reach, a spaceport, without autopilot (complicated / interesting)
5 closer in speed to the fjords of mars (nice / light)
Existed in the frontier of stellar systems with a belt of asteroids. I enjoyed doing slalom between them. In paioneer will be possible in the future, it would be interesting!
Every fuel scooping is an extreme sport in my book.
Right on commander!!!
Extreme sports is.... to search for red giants! 😛
Trying to fly between buidings.
That's good, and fast. Did you recover from the prang?
Personally, I hate the lack of control in Set Speed mode.
I did recover briefly, regained control, lost it again and regained.. Think I hit buildings 4 times before dying!
I had a go with manual but for some reason I get carried away and hold the thrust on for too long. I have the set speed roughly at the speed I'd like to be going and make small adjustments as I go. Also means you don't fall out of the sky at low speed due to gravity.
Agree though that its not always good with set speed.
You don't fall out of the sky in manual, either - but you do have to remember which thrusters are pointing towards the ground, and use them.
This video isn't extreme sports, but it pretty hairy - a manual takeoff and landing with a Hammerhead Heavy Freighter:
These things are big, and have a lot of inertia. I like to fly using only the front view, using only the keys, with full manual control over all thrusters. It's the purest form of flight... and a little masochistic.
Naturally, the spaceport is surrounded by tall buildings. The pad is barely larger than the vehicle. I manage to knock a couple of the buildings, but recover, and finally touch down. The autopilot is the wise choice, here.
Note that the stars are out during daylight. We've recently disabled HDR lighting in Pioneer, and this was a build from master, about twenty minutes ago.
😆
Thats absolutely true though. Effectively I'm using the set speed function as a flying "aid". I don't like alot of driving sims because of aids you can't disable. So I should learn to fly a bit better eh. 🙄 Watch this space.
Yes you weren't wrong about these being trickier. This is my attempt without a great deal of practice.
Didn't realise how big it was until I was wedged between two buildings. And I might have got away with the final landing if I hadn't clipped another building as I was levelling out.
Haha, yeah! Two rescues well executed there. Good to see that you didn't lose your head after bouncing.
A beautiful ship, though.
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