Space Engineers

Space Engineers

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Planet Lander
   
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23 Nov, 2020 @ 8:24am
24 Nov, 2020 @ 7:02am
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Planet Lander

Description
In-game script that manages gyros and thrusters to land a ship above terrain safely automatically.

Just make a group called Lander including your cockpit, gyros, and thrusters. Put this script in a PB. When run, it toggles the action on and off.

Slowly rotates the vessel so its down faces gravity vector while allowing steering, similar to my Leveller script or other fancier aligners, while also calculating braking distance to target altitude given available thrust, ship mass, gravity, current speed, and performs full burns at the last possible second similar to how SpaceX rolls, usually achieving precisely the target height in my tests, at which point it just hovers. I most definitely recommend having inertial dampening enabled while landing. Meanwhile displays a chart on the PB to show what's going on.

Definitely try in Creative first. I've only yet tried it on five ships, but it is working like a charm so far. Even MP works if server has scripts enabled. However Mars-like planet is its own special kind of PITA, and the script doesn't handle well situations like that where the thrusters must be changed during descent, re-entry at full speed is irredeemably fatal, there are dead zones where no thrusters work but H2, thin atmosphere. This script can handle a lot of variables, but Mars requires some special care and caution. On most planets re-entry at full velocity will work because the thrusters will work from an altitude that can fit the stop distance required from max speed, but not Mars-like. Mars-like fools this script (and most human pilots) and so will only work if you drop from a relatively low height or slow speed, there, or if you have super-ship. I managed to create a ship that can land on Mars-like from vanilla max speed, but it must have a lot of down-facing atmo thrusters and little else to succeed. So the ship must be physically capable of landing on that planet at that speed, for it to work, currently. It's not smart enough to switch thruster groups on and off, yet. In fact it works best with one type of thruster, in my tests.
8 Comments
Judge Kronos 5 Mar, 2022 @ 5:16pm 
I will test it out. Thank you
p3st|cIdE  [author] 5 Mar, 2022 @ 3:14pm 
This script is real simple, command and setting-wise, compared to some of my other scripts
Judge Kronos 5 Mar, 2022 @ 3:07pm 
Ok thats what I was asking. Ty
p3st|cIdE  [author] 1 Mar, 2022 @ 4:47am 
I don't understand what user input you mean. It reads custom data already. Buttons can be made to Run the programmable block with commands. The script lands on whichever planet you're at. The local planet.
Judge Kronos 1 Mar, 2022 @ 3:58am 
can you make the script accept user input from custom data or buttons? even better maybe use sds menu to tell the script which planet?
p3st|cIdE  [author] 25 Nov, 2021 @ 5:01pm 
You can tune the stop height iirc
p3st|cIdE  [author] 25 Nov, 2021 @ 5:01pm 
I think it has trouble on Marslike also :) yeah it doesn't account for the low atmo thrust response, gives it false confidence; if you're all H2 it's fine! :steammocking:
DWM 25 Nov, 2021 @ 11:23am 
It works great, even if it gives me almost a heart attack with just stopping so close at the ground.
Sadly, it can't handle Pertam, the desert planet, with low atmosphere and high 1.20 g.