I'm pretty sure something is wrong, I took off, using computer control nudged myself down to about 2 meters, then switched to manual and crashed.

Are you trying to land on the landing pad or on the ground?

Have you asked for landing clearance? You can't land on the pads until you ask for clearence. In the F4 comms menu, and have the port selected as a target. They will show you to a pad. Until that you will just collide and trash around.

The way you described should work if you want to land on the ground.

the keymapping should be present in the games folder i guess, but because you asked manual controls are by default;

I, K:  main / reverse

J, L: horizontal thrust (hover)

U,O: vertical thrust (lift)

in manual and computer controlled flight mode:

W,S: pitch

A,D: jaw

Q,R: roll

in computer controlled only:

increase set speed with "Enter" and lower set speed with "Right Shift".

i guess you can remap any of these keys if you like, but i didn't think it's needed at least for me they work well with this layout.

certain ships might lift badly? i don't know the actual ships to well, if a ship lifts badly you have only little time left after launching to engage the computer controlled flight mode and set a speed.

another reason could be cargo, but i assume you didn't loaded a single tonne of cargo.

never forget to lower the landing gear to land even if the ship prob. might have no visible landing gear, but without lowering it you can't land, neither dock or land rough.

in principles i would say it's easy as 1,2,3, but i'm also a veteran, not only to pioneer 😉

use computer controlled flight mode, get in a position about 100m (for beginners) above the (have you requested docking clearance?) ready to dock landing pad (green lights usually?).

set speed to 0.

align the ship on both horizontal axes, use outside camera for this prob.

lower landing gear.

stay on computer controlled and press "O" to sink and keep your alignment,

don't press to long you will overshoot else, around 10m above the surface you can switch to manual control and simply let the ship sink on the pad

or stay computer controllled and lower it with "O" until you touch the surface (prob. the thrusters will still fire then when you already docked, it won't matter but that's why i let the ship sink down in manual mode).

ah yes, read manuals 😉

i know, i hate this as as well, usually when i start a new game (never played), if i encounter problems i refere to a manual or quick reference.

nonetheless it was me who had read the 300 pages of "SimEarth", back in, when was that '93?.

however, to take a brief look into some text files won't harm.

erm yes, it's anything else as easy to control the ship manually under gravital conditions.

since a spaceship doesn't depends on a medium to lift it (air).

imagine it more like controlling a helicopter, if you would stop the engines of the copter, it will fall.

same for a "clumsy" spaceship - "engines off" and you sink (better fall) like a stone.

that would mean in manual flight when undocked and like to stay on manual flight mode,

lift nose and fire main thrusters until you reached a speed which grant's you can't fall anymore.

or keep firing the vertical and hover thrusters to glide around, "good luck commander".