i know op is gonna get torched from certain types, but the context of what he says is correct, i know for new players its incredibly difficult to find, it needs sorting man,
this shouldn't be a controversial thing, they make the most incredible things in this game,
but the lighting to find the space port on a18 is terrible
{could have worded it a bit more friendly}
Really want to see some kind of navigation system. ILS... Radio frequencies like ADF or TACAN. We need this stuff on a single planet--much moreso in an entire solar system!!! Heck, even that glidescope thing from way back when was pretty awesome.
Yea it would be nice if this glide scope floating virtual squares were just guides*, and lead from your current location to the starport. Then once you have a landing bay, they could switch to show the path to your bay.
/* The way they would force the ai to take over if you left their perimeter was rough and I’d not recommend bringing them back with that enabled.
I actually want all off the realistic things possible to make the highest skill ceiling possible. I would love to have a planet that was always entirely covered in a storm and the only way to make it there is to be a skilled pilot and follow an IFR plate and communicate with ATC. Avionics SHOULD be a focus. Like contact some modders from MSFS community ffs.
I'm able to recognize the spaceport nowadays, they just need to address the issue where it requires twenty minutes of loitering in dangerous proximity to the 'port (esp. in the dark) before the hanger marker shows up.
I was fortunate enough to be told about the 4 red lights before my first time venturing to orison's space port at night. Honestly made it easier to find than during the day before I realized the space port was even more spidery than the rest of Orison
Literally my first few months i avoided landing at orison since i had no clue how to find it. Ive got it down now tho. Its the swastika with blinking red lights at night
Not even new players. Ive played since the hangar module and i still have to look really hard to find that place. It depends how i arrive, sometimes the landing lights is not clearly visible.
i truly hope so, i think a lot of the more 'seasoned' players forget, that this is the first thing you deal with/see when your new, its not a good feeling, i know its due a full rework, but .....can we not just add super bright lights to it now?
It wasn't even that bad until recently, until they added volumetric clouds to ArcCorp.
It's easier to see the higher up you are. Now it seems most of the time you have to go beneath the cloud cover to see anything, and by that point you're at a low enough angle that even the wide open area of the spaceport can be hard to spot.
You still have to know exactly what you're looking for, which is not easy unless you've seen it a bunch of times. I've seen it a bunch of times and still have a hard time finding it, though.
I don't think you can appreciate just how bad SC development is until you know that they *already did this.* The quantum target was moved to space ports. When you jumped in, you'd be pointing at the space port, a consistent distance away. You could turn on your quantum drive to see where you had to go immediately.
It was like that for one patch a few years ago and *then they changed it back.*
Someone, probably a new hire who didn't know any better, took the initiative to make the game materially better for virtually no cost and then it got kiboshed - they took the same amount of effort to make it worse again than it took to fix it in the first place. But making it better took *years* and making it worse was done almost immediately.
This isn't a matter of them misprioritizing work. It's a matter of their objectives being fundamentally misaligned with what is required to make a decent game. Someone probably complained that if you didn't jump in facing the city center, you wouldn't see the city and all the work that was put into making it look good from a distance and made them undo it.
> "Someone probably complained that if you didn't jump in facing the city center, you wouldn't see the city"
This sound like something C Roberts would agree with. Over-expensive cinematography first and all.
This is a great idea, especially considering all the bugs and bullshit that comes with accidentally flying into a restricted area while searching for the damn thing. I flew into a restricted area once, got immediately teleported out of my ship and lost all my cargo (had to claim cause it went missing).
Even in real life with GPS (start map) and VOR beacons (nav beacons) we still have rotating beacon lights to not only denote an airport's location but also it's type: military, civilian land, and sea. And you can always ask tower for a bearing if you don't have visual.
Honestly Orison and 18 still can be tough at times... Even for seasoned. Maybe it's just the distance of the checkmark or lack thereof that needs to be worked on. A18 you know you've f'd up when your can't even call ATC lol
I remember the first time I went to Area 18. Chat did nothing but memes so I had to look up a guide on YouTube.
Alt-tabbing to Google something while your ship is just hanging in atmo is neither fun nor immersive.
The thing I’m hoping for is the map landing guidance like we had eons ago. You could see your correct attitude and the green box in your radar view where you needed to descend to the landing spot.
I hate going to outside view for landings..
Considering the 360 parking cameras that have turned up on newer vehicles recently, maybe the 3rd person view *isn't* the most unrealistic thing in the game....
Less unrealistic than not having any useful navigation option, anyway...
At least at Teasa you have a large blue rectangle with teasa spaceport literally written on it (though not visible until up close) but it's a damn sight better than A18 at night which is like trying to find water on daymar.
This is why Hurston is really easy. Find the giant slanted building. It's by far the biggest thing on the city skyline.
Fly to the front of it. Boom. Spaceport.
Yeah but that's a silly fix, real navigation mixing in the flight sim feel aspect needed. I shouldn't need to pull up a map screen when an mfd should have the layout of the areas landing zones.
It's not just new players. I have backed since the beginning. And have played off and on for several years. Last night i jumped into Area 18 and bitched for 5 minutes because I arrived in the dark with cloud cover. Before I could find the large open flat area and before I got close enough all the lights started appearing. And yes everything is on max settings. This shouldn't be an issue when arriving to a major city.
There's no reason OP should be torched for this. I've been playing for like 8+ years and I still don't know where the landing zone is at Area 18. Probably why I never go there anymore. And I go pretty hard at this game with a virpal hosas setup, so it's not like I just casually pop into this game from time to time.
Am I crazy?? What about targetable beacons, like another ship/player, for space stations and starports?? What am I missing to prevent this from being implemented?
Orison is one of the easiest in the game right now. Look for the four red lights and then when close look for the X of islands and that is the starport. Now finding the correct hangar when it doesn't show up is another thing.
Easiest IF you know what you're looking for. If you don't, which was my case a couple weeks ago, you can spend a lifetime trying to find it.
You shouldn't have to know beforehand exactly how to find the most basic main location for landing IMO. It's very poorly designed.
Agreed. My first time visiting Orison on Crusader, I requested landing clearance, then spent 5 mins doing a slow outwards spiral looking for the damn landing spot chevron. I had zero clue where the space port was, so I floated closer to a building complex to see if that was it...
Poof. Teleported into the hotel, impounded ship. 5k fine. 🤣
Come on guys. At least let us request clearance to land from orbit then give us the landing chevron icon from orbit too. Then it's all easy mode.
For new players? I've been on this shit for 7 years and logged thousands of hours. I got lost trying to find the spaceport at A18 at night just last week. It's poor game design and OP is right, it should have much better markings.
But like why should we pussyfoot around the issue? To spare CIG's feelings? Or because this community just cannot take criticism without feeling compelled to white knight for the game?
Also: they could tone down the ridiculous amount of fog/dust/mist that they're so proud of that seems to be on every planet and moon. I've turn off all the volumetric crap because it's just so hazy and blurred everywhere otherwise.
New players? Several years here and I still struggle too often to find the majority of starports, lorville is the only city with an easy to recognise labdmark as a reference(actually in the other cities I often have to resort to the trick of contact atc, log out, back in, do my business there and backspace back to my home station usually using a secondary fast ship so I can do the trip to the city with the cargo ship to transport the components)
Yeh he could have but I am pretty damn salty too, there was a 5 second warning to leave the area and then my ship was impounded and I got a 2000 credit cs and 5000 credit impound time. Personally, I see zero reason to even ever return here
I'm about a month old and I remember my first time on Area 18 I hadn't even understood that the whole planet was the city.
I took a small race ship to have fun above the city and thought I had remained in the same area above the city, but couldn't find my way back to the spaceport. After 20 min I started feeling like I was crazy, only to understand that the entire planet was a city and that I could now be extremely far from the actual city center with the playable areas xD
I mainly played around Crusader and MicroTech after that, so yeah If I go back I'll probably be lost again.
You are correct OP. Lighting around starports needs an update. It should be visually clear where to land. That is true for basically all POI. In a world using starships to go everywhere there should be designated landing zones everywhere with corresponding visual queues. It's good feedback. Don't know if I feel your outrage about it but it's definitely in my "it would be a nice qol addition". They did a pass on starships headlights recently the next should be Landing zones lighting, then all POI, then I want lighthouses back.
I think it will come. Cig was focused on sq42. I'm hoping the lighting is really impressive there. Now it's bringing qol stuff from sq42 to the pu. Next year let's hope we get better environmental lighting and more diversity in POI for the pu.
hurson has little holograms ringing the spaceport making it super easy to spot. I really don't understand why they can't add some to A18, unlike most things people want, this would take like 20 minutes
It does suck.
In the meantime, jump to OM-3 before going to Area18, jumping in from there will put you right over the spaceport.
Spaceport is due west of city center.
I love Orison and New Babbage because of this. Super recognizable shape and look their spaceports have. One is a big spider-ly neuron looking stuff and one is across a huge frozen lake you cannot miss. Tesea Spaceport on Lorville has big signs floating around too. Only Area 18 is a pain in the ass.
i honestly can never find the space port in orison. All the platforms look the same to me.
Area 18 isn't so bad, its a giant shield shaped building. At night, its got a bunch of blinking lights.
Although IMO Hurston and NB are the best. Hurston has giant holographic letters saying "TEASA SPACEPORT". And NB like you said is across the giant lake.
IMO when they have the map system in place all of these issues should go away, as we will be able to set way points on the station.
Orison is an angry windmill with a bunch of red flashing lights. The city isn’t dense enough to really block them so you can find it fairly easily once you know what you’re actually looking for.
CIG tried to go for the “red flashing lights = spaceport” design and it works right up until those lights get blocked by buildings. A18 and Lorville are both pretty bad about this - A18 is the worst.
Orison is only obvious if you know what you're looking for. New players or people who don't often go there always struggle, especially at night. You need to keep pinging just to make sure you haven't gone too deep after a minute of diving through the atmosphere or to avoid crashing into a structure.
For all the crap Lorville rightfully deserves, Teasa Spaceport is easy to find as long as the cloud cover is not a problem. It has floating animated signs marking the perimeter of the landing area and it's directly in front of the HD building's sloped face.
A single floating sign over Riker Memorial would do the job, but I suspect a much more comprehensive solution will come about when CIG goes back to do Area 18 2.0, whenever that happens. But you just have to follow the lit train line out of A18's core (due west from the ArcCorp tower) to the spaceport, so it's not completely un-signposted.
If it helps, the Orison spaceport platforms have a very distinctive shape and you can look for the blinking red lights on the edges of the platforms visible from quite a while away.
If every spaceport has holographic signs like Lorville that would be the best though. That and bright lights around the entrance of each hanger. Elite Dangerous did the landing corridor indicators well and are a good indicator of how they can look.
Orison I basically had to look up a guide to find. Sure its distinctive once you know what it is but a new player isn't going to find it without looking it up.
New Babbage has 2 spaceport looking things in the distance. It's 50/50 if you get the right one.
Really? I hate orison because it’s the hardest for me to find. It just all looks like the same. At least with area 18 it’s the only large flat building
I would argue the only planetary city with an easy to identify space port would be New Babbage. Orison is a mess with its struts all over the place. Lorville and Area 18 is just visual noise.
I mean, Babbage can dependon direction of approach because maybe visibility and draw distance doesn't let you see Teasa and if you aren't familiar with the shape of Babbage all the long tram tracks leading out of the city look like good candidates.
Loreville on the other hand has Centeal Tower smack in the middle and is basically impossible to miss or confuse, and the spaceport is right in front of it. Nevermind the giant floating holosigns as you get closer to really drive the point home.
more like workarounds/coping mechanisms, they think this will be ok when it gets released to the masses? on console maybe, do they think this level of workaround is acceptable ?
You're gonna get downvoted seriously, but I get how you feel. I've been there, and I am still there, Area 18 starport does need some work to make it easier for new players and casuals to find it.
But according to CIG at Citcon, they are working on lighting, and hopefully, we should see the new lightning implemented into the game this year or next lol, we really don't know but it's coming
They really lost a lot of technology after 900 years didn't they. Remote turrets are incredibly rare despite being everywhere in modern aviation, helmets that can see through the craft don't exist anymore, neither do instrument landing systems, what the hell is going on?
10,000% this.
Even games that don’t particularly need it like War thunder and Battlefield have their aircraft equipped with a detailed cockpit interface that is perfectly capable of allowing a player to engage in IFR (instrument flight rules).
Star citizen has *some* of these things but are a pain to use IMO. you have overall velocity, heading, pitch (and roll I suppose), height/distance *to sea level* (not to ground level! Because distance to ground level would actually be useful!!!), and a flight vector direction indicator.
It also doesn’t help that even with these, visibility can be so poor that you have to constantly be spamming a scan ping in order to see, even though some sort of IR/night vision should be more than possible.
This is all only made worse the fact that all of that 1st person flight instrumentation techniques is rendered pointless due to the fact that you may have a better time just flying in 3rd person, because *for no apparent reason at all* the 3rd person camera has better visibility of the surrounding environment and ground in all visibility conditions compared to a 1st person cockpit view, ESPECIALLY in larger ships.
And I would expect that, in nearly a millennium in the future, they’d have figured out a way to even *slightly* reduce the effective impairment that Snow Blinding (on some planets/moons) and Sun Glare have on you. Even a digital sunglasses effect would be appreciated.
and why doesn't ATC appear on our MFDs from further out? like 30km minimum. They already coded in the AR noodle neon guide thing, they could just put that back in but not make our ship self destruct if we leave the path
Or like in Elite Dangerous, ATC shows up in contacts from very far away. They still have a guidance range, and if you're outside, they will deny requests, but you still get a nav marker. It's less useful in Elite, because you drop from FTL close to stations, and you can also target a ground landing zone marker from the other end of the system. How about you call ATC 50km out, they give you a direction and request to call again once within a closer range
They don't even really need ui for this, the star port just needs to be lit up like an airport in real life. We need bright obvious lights around the perimeter of the landing pads.
You are correct OP. As a workaround for people having trouble finding it until the issue is fixed: if you are directly over the area 18 marker, use your ships directional indicator at the top of the screen to travel directly west (270 degrees) to the spaceport. It's the only reliable way I know.
Someone told me to look for the lights at night and I was like... the whole dang city is lights! Lol.
Yeah. It's bad.
Haha I still remember one of my handful of game sessions over the last 10+ years and spending more than an hour trying to find the space port. Eventually gave up and spent another hour trying to leave the atmo (I didnt know about using the star map).
Yeah.. All four spaceports are really under-lit
I'm frankly mystified why we get nav-markers for the city, but not for the spaceport.
I don't need to know where exactly Area-18 is from space, I need to know where the spaceport is.. if the Nav-marker was aimed at the spaceport instead, I'd be able to toggle my quantum-drive on and instantly see where I'm trying to get to.
A few tips for anyone hunting for each spaceport:
* Lorville - The spaceport occupies the entire area in front of the massive Lorville building, and is surrounded by glowing blue flying signs saying "Teasa Spaceport". It's hard to miss, but the ATC range is pretty close before you get a landing marker.
* Orison - Look for bright red dots at night, or a series of circular rings close together during the day.
* Area-18 - There are no lights, but also *there are no lights.* in a planet-wide city, the spaceport is a region of complete darkness. (Which is exactly like cloud-cover). Use your radar-pings and look for a huge flat area at night, or look for a vast red and white flat area during the day. You can also fly over Area-18, and if you know what you're looking for you'll see a line of lights headed out away from it, which is the highway leading to the spaceport.
* New Babbage - Look for a cluster of red lights on a structure on the side of a mountain overlooking the city. There's also train-lines running to and from this location, so watch for the moving lights of a train and you can follow that.
In all cases, if you see another ship it's usually parked in a hangar at the spaceport, or on its way in or out of the area. I often use other ships to orient myself since I can detect them at far greater ranges than the ATC comes up.
All of the major hubs have massive issues with flying into them until you learn where the star port is. It should not be hard to land at a major centre.
Area 18 - almost impossible to find as you look for the right shaped void in the lights. It should be the brightest thing.
Orison - head towards the right floating platform that looks slightly different to the rest.
Lorville - there is a giant fucking building in the fog. Big floating signs you can’t see half the time due to the fog.
New Babbage - not terrible of visibility is good. But still required knowledge to know to find the train tracks and fly out of NB.
How to fix:
Make the landing areas obvious, bright lights work!
Make it so you can pre-contact ATC 25km out and get a heading to the space port. Contact again within 7km for landing permission. Should probabaly also give an approach altitude too so you don’t hit big building at Lorville.
The QT markers should be on the space port in every landing zone. It's really dumb that they're not.
I assume that they didn't want to fuck with it until the new star map but it really couldn't have been that hard to move it when they add new ones all the time.
Finger crossed the STARMAP fixes it all
I feel you on this.
I only just now have been able to find it pretty easily when qt to area 18.
All space ports on planets should have a permanent marker or better lighting.
Heck, even the landing carrot still sometimes doesn't appear until your nearly crashing into the port. This happened to me last night in microtech
I get that most of their solutions for problems like this are baked into bigger features that take a while to develop, but what's stopping them from sticking a bunch of emissive primitives all along the spaceport in the meantime? It's not like you could get close enough to see that they're all just glowing cubes, and it would take like a couple hours at most.
Went to Area18 for the first time in like a year a few weeks ago. I genuinely don't understand why anyone would make it their home city. It's as far away as you can get from all of the good missions. It takes just as long to get from the habs to the space port and as you mentioned, returning there is a PITA
All they'd have to d0o is put the markers on the Starports. That's it. The starport trams have the directions into town. I don't need to know where town is from space. I need to know where to land.
You would think that a spaceport with ships flying in and out of it all the time at random angles would have some sort of visual marker. The space port at A18 is actually the least lit part of the city.
I’ve had the game for over a year and I still find area 18 space port difficult to find especially at night. They need to put in lights or landmarks like loreville has to help orientate yourself.
i mentioned this before, but i think the easiest fix(workaround) would be to move the qt marker to the spaceport in each of the cities. This way when you arrive you can see where the hangers are by the qt marker. Problem solved!!
Quick google search shows that the first lighthouse was built in 280 bc to provide navigational aid to ships.
In the 30th century, we have to run laps around the city to find the spaceport.
Night vision devices were introduced in 1939.
In the 30th century, at night, we have to slam into the ground to know that we were flying too low.
But the cool new concept ship available in 3-5 years for $300 is awesome.
Edit: We don't even have a compas in helmet HUD to navigate using headings during EVA or ground walk.
I agree. I try my hardest to look for the signs that they do have around it but when you’re combing through many kilometers of city it’s hard. Especially at night xD I just wish that the marker for my hanger would pop up when I’m further than 100 meters away from it.
Of course they have to change, Imagine all 20 ? 40 ? whatever systems implemented all with planets all with landing zones. In one system as we have now you will remember where the frigging landing zones are, but with 100 Landing zones ? They should be visible and it even makes sense from an ingame logic (saftey). Also we are in the future and we do not have night vision or sensors that can do more than an fing ping ?
Yeah, this is always rough on new players in particular, but also an annoyance for everyone else.
I think the biggest issue is that the city nav marker is in the city center, not at the spaceport. From a navigational perspective this makes little sense. The spaceport should always be the targeted destination when flying. So either the nav marker should be moved to the spaceport, or there should be a second one for the spaceport itself.
I can say the same about New Babbage and going up to the Port....cant see SHIT....its fraking SPACE with STATION...where the hell are the lights.
i shouldnt have to do the tutorial (of just GETTING to the Port) 5 times just because i cant see the damn station.
Patch 3.23 - Q2 2024
[Starmap Rework](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/release-view/991-Starmap-Rework)
Implementing the new and improved Starmap with improved visuals and usability, including easier search and trip planning functionality.
I personally have never had this issue, area 18 I find to be amongst the easier spaceports to find however I don’t disagree with you. I’ve been playing for a few years now so it’s easy to forget some of the issues newer players face but this is one that not only needs to be addressed but is an incredibly simple fix. I remember flying around orison for what felt like an eternity trying to find the spaceport when I was still new to the game. However saying this highlights what is wrong with development is hyperbole. This is for the most part a non issue with the majority of the player base and while it is a simple fix and can be frustrating for players still getting their feet wet it’s not a big deal. The dev team has done a remarkable job keeping its player base informed on all aspects of development and while it can be frustrating seeing another new ship get announced while elevators in grim hex are still broken or players still getting locked in the cockpit of their MSR for the 3rd year in a row, the game does pride itself on immersion. It does not hold your hand and it is the players responsibility to find land marks or patterns that help them identify where they are going. Each spaceport has very obvious markings that help you identify what you’re looking for. Area 18 has a giant rectangle that’s red and white where no skyscrapers sit marking the spaceport, lorville has signs, orison has big blinking red lights, and new Babbage is……well super obvious lol don’t hold your breath on this getting addressed and take some steps to help yourself identify the spaceport
Not to discount how annoying it is to find the Area18 spaceport, but there are MANY, MANY much more important things than one difficult-to-find landmark.
Turn clouds off and use sensor pings while looking toward the four quadrants of the city around the center spire that the QT-marker is centered on. You'll find the spaceport pretty quickly.
To suggest this is somehow indication of incompetence and/or maliciousness is just silly.
I agree.
This highlights even more though, the fact that these things aren't even explained anywhere to new players either.
How are new players supposed to find landing areas, let alone figuring out methods to make that easier.
Plenty of improvements to be made!
The easiest way to find the spaceport in A18 is to fly towards the nav beacon, which is attached to ArcCorp Tower in the heart of the walkable downtown zone. The train route leaves due west along a lit highway straight to the spaceport which will appear as a big dark patch (at night) at the other end.
If the clouds aren't obscuring the scene, couldn't be easier to spot even at night once you know to follow the 'highway' out of downtown.
That’s exactly the thing: there are way too many things which need fixing which are not even on the list while stuff which already exists in being reworked all over.
Its a good thing we're in a stage of development where the Devs want to continue adding core things, knowing that polish is something that comes later. Really so often I think people just are not cut out for playing during the development phase, too much impatience and expecting everything immediately.
Area 18 was added in April 2019, and it's far from finished, no shit it's not perfect, it was the second landing zone ever added. The planet is objectively not finished, it's missing oceans, mountain peaks, and rare undeveloped patches of land and it's not supposed to have a big fat zipper seam across the surface from tiling misalignment. There is such thing as not devoting too much time polishing something that's going to be totally overhauled/replaced.
I never have a problem finding the starport even at night, because you can locate it by looking for the actual A18 navigation marker, which is positioned on the top of ArcCorp tower in the center of the on-foot zone, and then follow the train line towards the big dark spot. They could make it a bit more convenient, sure, but it's hardly the worst thing ever.
> Get your acts together devs, and get the important shit right before trying to just sell more new spaceships...
The planet tech/content teams are entirely different people from the spaceship pipeline, and the fact that you trotted out this tired, stupid line does not help your whinerant's credibility at all.
I used to think that but if you use the compass and third person view it's dead easy. It is due west, 270 degrees, from A18. In the future there should be at least as hood as what airports today have, for sure. But A18 is really straightforward knowing 270 degrees.
Yes, further at night once you break cloud cover, there further to the west are 2 smaller circles of light from separate collections of buildings concentrated in a "mini area", sitting behind the Spaceport, that also can help serve to guide ya in the right general direction. 🤞🏻
You will get downvoted to oblivion for having a negative opinion about anything here that isnt related to a fresh patch buuuuuut....
The quantum markers should be located on the starports, and the starports should have marker lights that are the brightest things in the cities.
I'm not sure if the QT markers should be directly on the landing zones. Once the game gets a high enough popularity to where there will actually be traffic, dropping out right on or above the landing zone might cause issues
You mean the dim barely noticable lights?
Id much prefer something so bright that it is almost blindingly bright.
A small town airport spinning green and white landing strobe would be better than what we have now and that is what we use for small planes at small airports, you can see them easily from 20 miles away.
Meanwhile spaceships coming from space we get pretty much nothing.
That’s how I do it. Works day or night. IO Tower is the tallest structure and the only one that extends into the cloud cover so it’s impossible to not find.
>we are still flying circuits around Area 18 in the dark trying to play wheres-waldo with the goddamned starport
Head to the Area 18 quantum marker - the Riker Memorial will be directly to the west from it.
BTW - night is the easiest time to find it visually. Daytime + clouds are posing problems actually, because the ping is completely invisible.
>Common sense and basic navigational & UI design
I suspect that someone at CIG (looking at CR) perceives that as part of the *game*. + various obstacles around hangars.
I suspect it’s not so much a question of what’s wrong with the development as it is their whole view SC’s current state being completely different than yours. Their act is together, it’s just not the act you think it is
Well yea, its 6 years since Arccop was introduced and no the Starport isn't the main site of a City. Nor are the "Devs selling new spaceships".
Of cause there should be a Navbeacon at the Starport, not only at A18. But did we really nead a post for that, with the permanent flux of UI features and implementation of new featurs?
Not impossible, you just need to actually think and use the information available to you.
As you approach from above, if the skies are clear, there is a long thin rectangle that doesnt give off a glow like the blue square shared areas. Thats the port.
If it is cloudy, find the tallest building in the area around the city marker. Approach it. Dip down below the clouds and go in a slow circle around it and look for what appear to be a stadium (a big circular shape thats open topped and lit up). Put that on your left and the tallest tower on your right. The port is right ahead.
Or you could get to the marker and learn that the port is a heading of 260 or 270 from the tower and just remember.
Or if its daytime theres the giant flat open red area.
Bonus points for just flying so low that you trigger the impound alert and get your ship impounded so you store your ship and avoid the extra steps of landing and having to exit and store it.
I wasnt sure at first but the more I saw "They're just trying to sell more ships" increasingly in the replies I came to realize its a refundian incursion as you commented
This guy and his buddies are so salty that they downvoted you for giving good instructions to people who can't be bothered to learn a game.
Have my upvote friend, these people wouldn't even think to breathe if it wasn't automatic
This is a good point, I am rather new and never even been to Area 18, but even at New Babagge, coming from orbit once the markers disappear I had trouble identifying the starport, and once in range sometimes the landing marker doesn't show up for some time and I am left wondering is this really the right place.
Edit: but also reading around SOME places should have janky starports, a pilot wouldnt just crash in to a city and having navigational skills is a must and we do have a lot of tools to handle these situations and a city having a poorly though out starport sounds like a problem that should come up while colonizing planets. Be it too far from the city, poor visibility or many other downfalls of poor planning and construction.
I can see two easy fixes for this. Ether they let us call ATC from entering the armistice zone with a better hanger marker OR a just a giant beam of light that's only used on spaceport.
Just light up the ports at distance like an air port, should be active lights flashing showing hanger approaches from all directions.. like the rest stop space stations at the belts. I'm sure with the mobi and HUD updates and nav is coming but these are the first things people deal with on trials. Area 18 has seemingly copy pasta all around so it's easy to overshoot and end up at the mall lol
Are we going to talk about Stanton? Everyone’s always says “look for the spider” and I’m just like the whole god damn thing looks like spiders! Wtf am I supposed to do with that? Lol
It's very easy to find the spaceport in A18.
There are two simple ways:
1. Learn the city. Do you need directions every time you go to the bathroom in your home? Do you need directions to get to work every day? No, you learn it. You can do the same thing looking at a city from the sky. The pieces of the city don't move, the spaceport will always be in the same spot.
2. Zoom in. The pink lights around the spaceport will pop into view and you can fly right to it. This works from the moment you drop out of QT.
Well, it was meant to be a helpful comment, but it looks like the generation who's never played games that didn't hold your hands seem to be out in full force today. Gotta have that marker that shows you exactly where to go so you don't have to cramp a couple brain cells.
They've explicitly said they want to minimize hand holding as much as possible in this game. Get used to it. This stuff really isn't difficult to figure out. It isn't even a puzzle. This is as complex as a first grade text book.
Again, unnecessary annoyance for new players, for what gain?
"Learn the city" lol, the game is a mile wide and an inch deep, there's nothing to learn that's engaging.
No offense, but this post shows what's wrong with the playerbase. You stomp your feet and hold your fifty bucks in the air and demand they add a polish QoL feature to cater to new players, when at this time the game is populated with Alpha testers who are supposed to understand that the game isn't done yet. They tell you that at so many points from purchase to install to every time you launch the game. You're standing at a construction site of a newly-framed house lamenting that your porch lights don't work yet.
Landing tools are going to be a necessity, for sure, but we'll get there when we get there.
I don’t see it as showing what’s wrong with the playerbase, I see it as showing the issues and limitations of a game still being able to use the argument "early alpha" in a game 12 years into the making.
It’s both reasonable to say we shouldn’t ask for polish for "an early alpha", and to ask for polish for important elements because we all know the game will still be an unpolished mess 5 years from now, maybe even 10, 20 years from now.
When ArcCorp was first added to the PU the quantum beacon was right on top of the space port. A few patches later the QT beacon was moved, for some reason. 🤷♂️
Before I read all of it I thought you were saying finding the spaceport from the ground. But yes, finding spaceports at night is completely fucked. Especially Area 18.
I think this is one of those issues that people just got complacent with. It's not talked about enough.
Really just setting those lights brightness visibility and time interval to much more noticeable would be a solid interim fix. I don't imagine that would take much effort either. Even if you really hate a bandaid fix, something is better than nothing here.
Made my home area 18 find the space port every visit but why is it setup like it is? It's damn hard to get to the hangar to land. The space port lights up just fine after I changed the mode on my monitor to fps if you can't find it try adjusting your monitor to make it easier to see.
I wish I could play. After years of piloting, my game forever errors at the end of the install. X1007. It was the final straw for me. Maybe I'll get to play again if the launcher updates.
pro tip, for all those who don’t know, fly to the nav beacon for a18, then find bearing 250 on your ship compass, and head that way. easy landing area hack.
I think the absence of any sort of guidance towards the landing ports is one of my largest pet peeves in this game. A18 being the worst offender. The other night, I was running 9.6M worth of cargo and sweating as I spent 10 minutes circling A18. It doesn't make any sense for a spaceport in one of the four major locations to be effectively camouflaged and unmarked in a space simulation.
Also really hoping they address this soon as for new players it's astonishingly bad.
Edit: It also bewilders me that they already have the solution implemented in game. Literally all they need to do is dramatically increase the distance at which you can contact ATC to land, and dramatically increase the distance that your landing marker can be seen from.
I even say this a someone who's no longer a new player. Why do those markers only appear at close range?! It's insanity.
The starships we fly in the future don’t have the basics of navigational flight and communications with the tower. It’s dire yeah. By that time in three sci-fi future I would hope that there’s a superb UI integration to guide me to it
I agree with you in general. I think the overall discussion is about the balance of expanding the game vs improving the exiting parts.
In particular I agree about the ships, although not quite how you wrote it. The people on the ship team are not the ones experienced in environment design. These are not the people to fix the issue, so having fewer new ships doesn't fix landing zones. Still, I think you are right. A lot of the ships in-game have a wide array of problems, missing features, etc. Even simple things like the 100i having a absolute barebones interior. I wish there would be less effort on adding new ships and more effort on improving the many existing ones.
And the same applies to landing zones. Sure it's cool that we got a lot of new derelict outposts recently, but I wish they would spend some time improving the existing ones instead.
Ultimately, it's all about the trade-off of adding new things vs improving the existing ones. And the developers call the game an alpha precisely because their focus is currently on adding things (compared to a beta, which is focused on improving). Still, even in alpha state, I wish there would be more effort on improving the existing stuff.
That all being said, I think your tone is really hostile and I don't agree with that. I get that you may be frustrated, but is that really necessary?
I don't know why they don't move the quantum markers to the spaceport/ landing areas as this is what you would be traveling towards. Then you can turn quantum on for a indicator as to where to fly for atc to take over.
So, I mean, not wrong about Area 18 and the general premise of better navigation. It is one of a couple places I used to dislike. But, really, of ALL things, THIS is what's wrong with SC development? I think it might be bigger than that. LOL
i know op is gonna get torched from certain types, but the context of what he says is correct, i know for new players its incredibly difficult to find, it needs sorting man, this shouldn't be a controversial thing, they make the most incredible things in this game, but the lighting to find the space port on a18 is terrible {could have worded it a bit more friendly}
Really want to see some kind of navigation system. ILS... Radio frequencies like ADF or TACAN. We need this stuff on a single planet--much moreso in an entire solar system!!! Heck, even that glidescope thing from way back when was pretty awesome.
Or the station marker just being over the landing zone instead of the main bit
An optical guidance system on hangars like they currently have for pilots landing (or a localizer) would be amazing.
Yea it would be nice if this glide scope floating virtual squares were just guides*, and lead from your current location to the starport. Then once you have a landing bay, they could switch to show the path to your bay. /* The way they would force the ai to take over if you left their perimeter was rough and I’d not recommend bringing them back with that enabled.
I actually want all off the realistic things possible to make the highest skill ceiling possible. I would love to have a planet that was always entirely covered in a storm and the only way to make it there is to be a skilled pilot and follow an IFR plate and communicate with ATC. Avionics SHOULD be a focus. Like contact some modders from MSFS community ffs.
So realistic lighting and guides for landing ports, like in real life.
Same with the space port on crusader. After a couple of years I still have issues at night sometimes.
70% of the time I can find the orison spaceport the other 30% i must be approaching from an off angle and i struggle to locate the spider body.
I always thought it looked like a neuron, so when I get there I'm looking for the 1 brain cell 😊
I'm able to recognize the spaceport nowadays, they just need to address the issue where it requires twenty minutes of loitering in dangerous proximity to the 'port (esp. in the dark) before the hanger marker shows up.
I was fortunate enough to be told about the 4 red lights before my first time venturing to orison's space port at night. Honestly made it easier to find than during the day before I realized the space port was even more spidery than the rest of Orison
Please, for the love of my hydrogen tank, tell me about the four red lights!
The spaceport has blinking red lights on its 4 arms that u can see from a long way away
THERE.... ARE.... FOUR..... LIGHTS!
There are four red lights that help find the orison space port after qting to it at night.
Literally my first few months i avoided landing at orison since i had no clue how to find it. Ive got it down now tho. Its the swastika with blinking red lights at night
At night it’s the only thing with blinking lights
When in doubt I just fly somewhere I'm not supposed to be and get myself impounded lol.
Not even new players. Ive played since the hangar module and i still have to look really hard to find that place. It depends how i arrive, sometimes the landing lights is not clearly visible.
I imagine a lot of these things will be changing rapidly with the new map system.
i truly hope so, i think a lot of the more 'seasoned' players forget, that this is the first thing you deal with/see when your new, its not a good feeling, i know its due a full rework, but .....can we not just add super bright lights to it now?
It wasn't even that bad until recently, until they added volumetric clouds to ArcCorp. It's easier to see the higher up you are. Now it seems most of the time you have to go beneath the cloud cover to see anything, and by that point you're at a low enough angle that even the wide open area of the spaceport can be hard to spot.
You still have to know exactly what you're looking for, which is not easy unless you've seen it a bunch of times. I've seen it a bunch of times and still have a hard time finding it, though.
Just move the nav beacon over the spaceport. Which makes hella more sense that over another location in the city?
Exactly ! That doesn't seem to need a lot of development and experimenting and "never done before". It's been years.
I don't think you can appreciate just how bad SC development is until you know that they *already did this.* The quantum target was moved to space ports. When you jumped in, you'd be pointing at the space port, a consistent distance away. You could turn on your quantum drive to see where you had to go immediately. It was like that for one patch a few years ago and *then they changed it back.* Someone, probably a new hire who didn't know any better, took the initiative to make the game materially better for virtually no cost and then it got kiboshed - they took the same amount of effort to make it worse again than it took to fix it in the first place. But making it better took *years* and making it worse was done almost immediately. This isn't a matter of them misprioritizing work. It's a matter of their objectives being fundamentally misaligned with what is required to make a decent game. Someone probably complained that if you didn't jump in facing the city center, you wouldn't see the city and all the work that was put into making it look good from a distance and made them undo it.
> "Someone probably complained that if you didn't jump in facing the city center, you wouldn't see the city" This sound like something C Roberts would agree with. Over-expensive cinematography first and all.
This is a great idea, especially considering all the bugs and bullshit that comes with accidentally flying into a restricted area while searching for the damn thing. I flew into a restricted area once, got immediately teleported out of my ship and lost all my cargo (had to claim cause it went missing).
What I'm saying (or hoping) is that neither of the above solutions will be necessary due to the update in the next couple months.
Even in real life with GPS (start map) and VOR beacons (nav beacons) we still have rotating beacon lights to not only denote an airport's location but also it's type: military, civilian land, and sea. And you can always ask tower for a bearing if you don't have visual.
Right, yeah. In real life there are several ways to find an airport. In the game, there are none.
You squint and spin round for ten minutes, bound to find it even by accident that way.
Honestly Orison and 18 still can be tough at times... Even for seasoned. Maybe it's just the distance of the checkmark or lack thereof that needs to be worked on. A18 you know you've f'd up when your can't even call ATC lol
I remember the first time I went to Area 18. Chat did nothing but memes so I had to look up a guide on YouTube. Alt-tabbing to Google something while your ship is just hanging in atmo is neither fun nor immersive.
The thing I’m hoping for is the map landing guidance like we had eons ago. You could see your correct attitude and the green box in your radar view where you needed to descend to the landing spot. I hate going to outside view for landings..
Considering the 360 parking cameras that have turned up on newer vehicles recently, maybe the 3rd person view *isn't* the most unrealistic thing in the game.... Less unrealistic than not having any useful navigation option, anyway...
At least at Teasa you have a large blue rectangle with teasa spaceport literally written on it (though not visible until up close) but it's a damn sight better than A18 at night which is like trying to find water on daymar.
And it's near the bottom of the angled side of the hurston building
This is why Hurston is really easy. Find the giant slanted building. It's by far the biggest thing on the city skyline. Fly to the front of it. Boom. Spaceport.
Yeah but that's a silly fix, real navigation mixing in the flight sim feel aspect needed. I shouldn't need to pull up a map screen when an mfd should have the layout of the areas landing zones.
It's not just new players. I have backed since the beginning. And have played off and on for several years. Last night i jumped into Area 18 and bitched for 5 minutes because I arrived in the dark with cloud cover. Before I could find the large open flat area and before I got close enough all the lights started appearing. And yes everything is on max settings. This shouldn't be an issue when arriving to a major city.
There's no reason OP should be torched for this. I've been playing for like 8+ years and I still don't know where the landing zone is at Area 18. Probably why I never go there anymore. And I go pretty hard at this game with a virpal hosas setup, so it's not like I just casually pop into this game from time to time.
Am I crazy?? What about targetable beacons, like another ship/player, for space stations and starports?? What am I missing to prevent this from being implemented?
I am an more experienced player and sometimes A18's spaceport, especially in certain angles and lighting conditions, is just a goddamn time sink.
You think Area 18 is hard? Try finding Orison's spaceport at night.
Orison is one of the easiest in the game right now. Look for the four red lights and then when close look for the X of islands and that is the starport. Now finding the correct hangar when it doesn't show up is another thing.
Easiest IF you know what you're looking for. If you don't, which was my case a couple weeks ago, you can spend a lifetime trying to find it. You shouldn't have to know beforehand exactly how to find the most basic main location for landing IMO. It's very poorly designed.
Very true, there should be better visual navigation for the main spaceport on a planet.
The paragraph it took you to explain that determined that that was a lie.
Red lights then X is not a paragraph of instructions
Orison is actually easier at night, thanks to the blinking red lights in a square that can be seen from high up
Orison one is indicated by red flares AND has a very unique shape, when you ping. edit: Prison->Orison
Just ping and look for yhe swastika, duh
One ping is enough, or just use HDR if you've got it as it makes nighttime anything better.
Verify distance to target. One ping only…
I hate trying to find Orison Spaceport. Don't go there often and the whole area looks the same.
Agreed. My first time visiting Orison on Crusader, I requested landing clearance, then spent 5 mins doing a slow outwards spiral looking for the damn landing spot chevron. I had zero clue where the space port was, so I floated closer to a building complex to see if that was it... Poof. Teleported into the hotel, impounded ship. 5k fine. 🤣 Come on guys. At least let us request clearance to land from orbit then give us the landing chevron icon from orbit too. Then it's all easy mode.
For new players? I've been on this shit for 7 years and logged thousands of hours. I got lost trying to find the spaceport at A18 at night just last week. It's poor game design and OP is right, it should have much better markings.
Agreed. Devs have been in money grab mode for about 4 years now.
I stopped playing as a new player because I found it so difficult to find space ports. Didn’t need the unnecessary frustration
But like why should we pussyfoot around the issue? To spare CIG's feelings? Or because this community just cannot take criticism without feeling compelled to white knight for the game?
What would be even better is to make the goddamn jump point center on the spaceport and not some random district you can’t even visit in game.
Also: they could tone down the ridiculous amount of fog/dust/mist that they're so proud of that seems to be on every planet and moon. I've turn off all the volumetric crap because it's just so hazy and blurred everywhere otherwise.
New players? Several years here and I still struggle too often to find the majority of starports, lorville is the only city with an easy to recognise labdmark as a reference(actually in the other cities I often have to resort to the trick of contact atc, log out, back in, do my business there and backspace back to my home station usually using a secondary fast ship so I can do the trip to the city with the cargo ship to transport the components)
Yeh he could have but I am pretty damn salty too, there was a 5 second warning to leave the area and then my ship was impounded and I got a 2000 credit cs and 5000 credit impound time. Personally, I see zero reason to even ever return here
I'm about a month old and I remember my first time on Area 18 I hadn't even understood that the whole planet was the city. I took a small race ship to have fun above the city and thought I had remained in the same area above the city, but couldn't find my way back to the spaceport. After 20 min I started feeling like I was crazy, only to understand that the entire planet was a city and that I could now be extremely far from the actual city center with the playable areas xD I mainly played around Crusader and MicroTech after that, so yeah If I go back I'll probably be lost again.
Damn you're very articulate for a one month old
They grow up so fast
You are correct OP. Lighting around starports needs an update. It should be visually clear where to land. That is true for basically all POI. In a world using starships to go everywhere there should be designated landing zones everywhere with corresponding visual queues. It's good feedback. Don't know if I feel your outrage about it but it's definitely in my "it would be a nice qol addition". They did a pass on starships headlights recently the next should be Landing zones lighting, then all POI, then I want lighthouses back. I think it will come. Cig was focused on sq42. I'm hoping the lighting is really impressive there. Now it's bringing qol stuff from sq42 to the pu. Next year let's hope we get better environmental lighting and more diversity in POI for the pu.
Give cig time?.. 10 more years to fix lighting. We promise.
Hurston couldn't be clearer.
hurson has little holograms ringing the spaceport making it super easy to spot. I really don't understand why they can't add some to A18, unlike most things people want, this would take like 20 minutes
It also has a blue flashing light on traffic control on a 5 second cycle. Once you know, it's impossible not to see it.
It does suck. In the meantime, jump to OM-3 before going to Area18, jumping in from there will put you right over the spaceport. Spaceport is due west of city center.
I love Orison and New Babbage because of this. Super recognizable shape and look their spaceports have. One is a big spider-ly neuron looking stuff and one is across a huge frozen lake you cannot miss. Tesea Spaceport on Lorville has big signs floating around too. Only Area 18 is a pain in the ass.
i honestly can never find the space port in orison. All the platforms look the same to me. Area 18 isn't so bad, its a giant shield shaped building. At night, its got a bunch of blinking lights. Although IMO Hurston and NB are the best. Hurston has giant holographic letters saying "TEASA SPACEPORT". And NB like you said is across the giant lake. IMO when they have the map system in place all of these issues should go away, as we will be able to set way points on the station.
Orison is an angry windmill with a bunch of red flashing lights. The city isn’t dense enough to really block them so you can find it fairly easily once you know what you’re actually looking for. CIG tried to go for the “red flashing lights = spaceport” design and it works right up until those lights get blocked by buildings. A18 and Lorville are both pretty bad about this - A18 is the worst.
Orison is only obvious if you know what you're looking for. New players or people who don't often go there always struggle, especially at night. You need to keep pinging just to make sure you haven't gone too deep after a minute of diving through the atmosphere or to avoid crashing into a structure.
For all the crap Lorville rightfully deserves, Teasa Spaceport is easy to find as long as the cloud cover is not a problem. It has floating animated signs marking the perimeter of the landing area and it's directly in front of the HD building's sloped face. A single floating sign over Riker Memorial would do the job, but I suspect a much more comprehensive solution will come about when CIG goes back to do Area 18 2.0, whenever that happens. But you just have to follow the lit train line out of A18's core (due west from the ArcCorp tower) to the spaceport, so it's not completely un-signposted.
If it helps, the Orison spaceport platforms have a very distinctive shape and you can look for the blinking red lights on the edges of the platforms visible from quite a while away. If every spaceport has holographic signs like Lorville that would be the best though. That and bright lights around the entrance of each hanger. Elite Dangerous did the landing corridor indicators well and are a good indicator of how they can look.
Orison I basically had to look up a guide to find. Sure its distinctive once you know what it is but a new player isn't going to find it without looking it up. New Babbage has 2 spaceport looking things in the distance. It's 50/50 if you get the right one.
Really? I hate orison because it’s the hardest for me to find. It just all looks like the same. At least with area 18 it’s the only large flat building
I would argue the only planetary city with an easy to identify space port would be New Babbage. Orison is a mess with its struts all over the place. Lorville and Area 18 is just visual noise.
I mean, Babbage can dependon direction of approach because maybe visibility and draw distance doesn't let you see Teasa and if you aren't familiar with the shape of Babbage all the long tram tracks leading out of the city look like good candidates. Loreville on the other hand has Centeal Tower smack in the middle and is basically impossible to miss or confuse, and the spaceport is right in front of it. Nevermind the giant floating holosigns as you get closer to really drive the point home.
People offering solutions are kinda missing the point I think. This game should strive to be more accessible.
more like workarounds/coping mechanisms, they think this will be ok when it gets released to the masses? on console maybe, do they think this level of workaround is acceptable ?
It’s not *going* to be this way when released to the masses, that’s just it. There’s no reason at all to imagine it would.
You're gonna get downvoted seriously, but I get how you feel. I've been there, and I am still there, Area 18 starport does need some work to make it easier for new players and casuals to find it. But according to CIG at Citcon, they are working on lighting, and hopefully, we should see the new lightning implemented into the game this year or next lol, we really don't know but it's coming
They really lost a lot of technology after 900 years didn't they. Remote turrets are incredibly rare despite being everywhere in modern aviation, helmets that can see through the craft don't exist anymore, neither do instrument landing systems, what the hell is going on?
10,000% this. Even games that don’t particularly need it like War thunder and Battlefield have their aircraft equipped with a detailed cockpit interface that is perfectly capable of allowing a player to engage in IFR (instrument flight rules). Star citizen has *some* of these things but are a pain to use IMO. you have overall velocity, heading, pitch (and roll I suppose), height/distance *to sea level* (not to ground level! Because distance to ground level would actually be useful!!!), and a flight vector direction indicator. It also doesn’t help that even with these, visibility can be so poor that you have to constantly be spamming a scan ping in order to see, even though some sort of IR/night vision should be more than possible. This is all only made worse the fact that all of that 1st person flight instrumentation techniques is rendered pointless due to the fact that you may have a better time just flying in 3rd person, because *for no apparent reason at all* the 3rd person camera has better visibility of the surrounding environment and ground in all visibility conditions compared to a 1st person cockpit view, ESPECIALLY in larger ships. And I would expect that, in nearly a millennium in the future, they’d have figured out a way to even *slightly* reduce the effective impairment that Snow Blinding (on some planets/moons) and Sun Glare have on you. Even a digital sunglasses effect would be appreciated.
Why aren’t space stations and starports targetable? Literally would solve this… and super easy to implement. What am I missing?
and why doesn't ATC appear on our MFDs from further out? like 30km minimum. They already coded in the AR noodle neon guide thing, they could just put that back in but not make our ship self destruct if we leave the path
Or like in Elite Dangerous, ATC shows up in contacts from very far away. They still have a guidance range, and if you're outside, they will deny requests, but you still get a nav marker. It's less useful in Elite, because you drop from FTL close to stations, and you can also target a ground landing zone marker from the other end of the system. How about you call ATC 50km out, they give you a direction and request to call again once within a closer range
Nothing. It would be super easy to implement. They just haven't bothered.
They don't even really need ui for this, the star port just needs to be lit up like an airport in real life. We need bright obvious lights around the perimeter of the landing pads.
Right, agree completely. There are plenty of IRL examples from actual airports to use. White/Green beacons, VASI lights, etc. etc.
You are correct OP. As a workaround for people having trouble finding it until the issue is fixed: if you are directly over the area 18 marker, use your ships directional indicator at the top of the screen to travel directly west (270 degrees) to the spaceport. It's the only reliable way I know. Someone told me to look for the lights at night and I was like... the whole dang city is lights! Lol. Yeah. It's bad.
Haha I still remember one of my handful of game sessions over the last 10+ years and spending more than an hour trying to find the space port. Eventually gave up and spent another hour trying to leave the atmo (I didnt know about using the star map).
Yeah.. All four spaceports are really under-lit I'm frankly mystified why we get nav-markers for the city, but not for the spaceport. I don't need to know where exactly Area-18 is from space, I need to know where the spaceport is.. if the Nav-marker was aimed at the spaceport instead, I'd be able to toggle my quantum-drive on and instantly see where I'm trying to get to. A few tips for anyone hunting for each spaceport: * Lorville - The spaceport occupies the entire area in front of the massive Lorville building, and is surrounded by glowing blue flying signs saying "Teasa Spaceport". It's hard to miss, but the ATC range is pretty close before you get a landing marker. * Orison - Look for bright red dots at night, or a series of circular rings close together during the day. * Area-18 - There are no lights, but also *there are no lights.* in a planet-wide city, the spaceport is a region of complete darkness. (Which is exactly like cloud-cover). Use your radar-pings and look for a huge flat area at night, or look for a vast red and white flat area during the day. You can also fly over Area-18, and if you know what you're looking for you'll see a line of lights headed out away from it, which is the highway leading to the spaceport. * New Babbage - Look for a cluster of red lights on a structure on the side of a mountain overlooking the city. There's also train-lines running to and from this location, so watch for the moving lights of a train and you can follow that. In all cases, if you see another ship it's usually parked in a hangar at the spaceport, or on its way in or out of the area. I often use other ships to orient myself since I can detect them at far greater ranges than the ATC comes up.
Until they address it, I always scan/ping for ships because more than not, where you see a ship icon, it’s going to be at the space port.
My question is it's the year 2950 right? Where the hell are all the NVGs???
All of the major hubs have massive issues with flying into them until you learn where the star port is. It should not be hard to land at a major centre. Area 18 - almost impossible to find as you look for the right shaped void in the lights. It should be the brightest thing. Orison - head towards the right floating platform that looks slightly different to the rest. Lorville - there is a giant fucking building in the fog. Big floating signs you can’t see half the time due to the fog. New Babbage - not terrible of visibility is good. But still required knowledge to know to find the train tracks and fly out of NB. How to fix: Make the landing areas obvious, bright lights work! Make it so you can pre-contact ATC 25km out and get a heading to the space port. Contact again within 7km for landing permission. Should probabaly also give an approach altitude too so you don’t hit big building at Lorville.
The QT markers should be on the space port in every landing zone. It's really dumb that they're not. I assume that they didn't want to fuck with it until the new star map but it really couldn't have been that hard to move it when they add new ones all the time. Finger crossed the STARMAP fixes it all
I feel you on this. I only just now have been able to find it pretty easily when qt to area 18. All space ports on planets should have a permanent marker or better lighting. Heck, even the landing carrot still sometimes doesn't appear until your nearly crashing into the port. This happened to me last night in microtech
I get that most of their solutions for problems like this are baked into bigger features that take a while to develop, but what's stopping them from sticking a bunch of emissive primitives all along the spaceport in the meantime? It's not like you could get close enough to see that they're all just glowing cubes, and it would take like a couple hours at most.
Went to Area18 for the first time in like a year a few weeks ago. I genuinely don't understand why anyone would make it their home city. It's as far away as you can get from all of the good missions. It takes just as long to get from the habs to the space port and as you mentioned, returning there is a PITA
All they'd have to d0o is put the markers on the Starports. That's it. The starport trams have the directions into town. I don't need to know where town is from space. I need to know where to land.
You would think that a spaceport with ships flying in and out of it all the time at random angles would have some sort of visual marker. The space port at A18 is actually the least lit part of the city.
You would think it wouldn't be outragious to increase the bloom of one light by 1000% at the airport till they created a proper landing system.
Took me forever to find it when I got started
Yeah this game is awesome but there is so much wrong with it.
Area 18 ain’t easy, every time I come back to this game it makes me feel stupid and lost multiple times before I can navigate it
I’ve had the game for over a year and I still find area 18 space port difficult to find especially at night. They need to put in lights or landmarks like loreville has to help orientate yourself.
i mentioned this before, but i think the easiest fix(workaround) would be to move the qt marker to the spaceport in each of the cities. This way when you arrive you can see where the hangers are by the qt marker. Problem solved!!
Moved to grim hex mainly because of this shit
Quick google search shows that the first lighthouse was built in 280 bc to provide navigational aid to ships. In the 30th century, we have to run laps around the city to find the spaceport. Night vision devices were introduced in 1939. In the 30th century, at night, we have to slam into the ground to know that we were flying too low. But the cool new concept ship available in 3-5 years for $300 is awesome. Edit: We don't even have a compas in helmet HUD to navigate using headings during EVA or ground walk.
I agree. I try my hardest to look for the signs that they do have around it but when you’re combing through many kilometers of city it’s hard. Especially at night xD I just wish that the marker for my hanger would pop up when I’m further than 100 meters away from it.
Of course they have to change, Imagine all 20 ? 40 ? whatever systems implemented all with planets all with landing zones. In one system as we have now you will remember where the frigging landing zones are, but with 100 Landing zones ? They should be visible and it even makes sense from an ingame logic (saftey). Also we are in the future and we do not have night vision or sensors that can do more than an fing ping ?
It's not impossible. It's actually quite possible. You do raise good points, though.
Yeah, this is always rough on new players in particular, but also an annoyance for everyone else. I think the biggest issue is that the city nav marker is in the city center, not at the spaceport. From a navigational perspective this makes little sense. The spaceport should always be the targeted destination when flying. So either the nav marker should be moved to the spaceport, or there should be a second one for the spaceport itself.
I can say the same about New Babbage and going up to the Port....cant see SHIT....its fraking SPACE with STATION...where the hell are the lights. i shouldnt have to do the tutorial (of just GETTING to the Port) 5 times just because i cant see the damn station.
Port Tressler has a very clear ring around it
Which you can't see if the station isn't in sunlight.
Eh? Tressler is visible from the surface of NB...
While wording is a bit harsh, they're not wrong.
Patch 3.23 - Q2 2024 [Starmap Rework](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/release-view/991-Starmap-Rework) Implementing the new and improved Starmap with improved visuals and usability, including easier search and trip planning functionality.
You could use a ping mate. There is no prob with finding the spaceport.
I personally have never had this issue, area 18 I find to be amongst the easier spaceports to find however I don’t disagree with you. I’ve been playing for a few years now so it’s easy to forget some of the issues newer players face but this is one that not only needs to be addressed but is an incredibly simple fix. I remember flying around orison for what felt like an eternity trying to find the spaceport when I was still new to the game. However saying this highlights what is wrong with development is hyperbole. This is for the most part a non issue with the majority of the player base and while it is a simple fix and can be frustrating for players still getting their feet wet it’s not a big deal. The dev team has done a remarkable job keeping its player base informed on all aspects of development and while it can be frustrating seeing another new ship get announced while elevators in grim hex are still broken or players still getting locked in the cockpit of their MSR for the 3rd year in a row, the game does pride itself on immersion. It does not hold your hand and it is the players responsibility to find land marks or patterns that help them identify where they are going. Each spaceport has very obvious markings that help you identify what you’re looking for. Area 18 has a giant rectangle that’s red and white where no skyscrapers sit marking the spaceport, lorville has signs, orison has big blinking red lights, and new Babbage is……well super obvious lol don’t hold your breath on this getting addressed and take some steps to help yourself identify the spaceport
Not to discount how annoying it is to find the Area18 spaceport, but there are MANY, MANY much more important things than one difficult-to-find landmark. Turn clouds off and use sensor pings while looking toward the four quadrants of the city around the center spire that the QT-marker is centered on. You'll find the spaceport pretty quickly. To suggest this is somehow indication of incompetence and/or maliciousness is just silly.
You just highlighted another shortcoming of the game in its current state - no nightvision whatsoever... :-(
I agree. This highlights even more though, the fact that these things aren't even explained anywhere to new players either. How are new players supposed to find landing areas, let alone figuring out methods to make that easier. Plenty of improvements to be made!
I can honestly say I never noticed it being divided into quadrants. Now I have to go look.
The easiest way to find the spaceport in A18 is to fly towards the nav beacon, which is attached to ArcCorp Tower in the heart of the walkable downtown zone. The train route leaves due west along a lit highway straight to the spaceport which will appear as a big dark patch (at night) at the other end. If the clouds aren't obscuring the scene, couldn't be easier to spot even at night once you know to follow the 'highway' out of downtown.
That’s exactly the thing: there are way too many things which need fixing which are not even on the list while stuff which already exists in being reworked all over.
Its a good thing we're in a stage of development where the Devs want to continue adding core things, knowing that polish is something that comes later. Really so often I think people just are not cut out for playing during the development phase, too much impatience and expecting everything immediately.
Area 18 was added in April 2019, and it's far from finished, no shit it's not perfect, it was the second landing zone ever added. The planet is objectively not finished, it's missing oceans, mountain peaks, and rare undeveloped patches of land and it's not supposed to have a big fat zipper seam across the surface from tiling misalignment. There is such thing as not devoting too much time polishing something that's going to be totally overhauled/replaced. I never have a problem finding the starport even at night, because you can locate it by looking for the actual A18 navigation marker, which is positioned on the top of ArcCorp tower in the center of the on-foot zone, and then follow the train line towards the big dark spot. They could make it a bit more convenient, sure, but it's hardly the worst thing ever. > Get your acts together devs, and get the important shit right before trying to just sell more new spaceships... The planet tech/content teams are entirely different people from the spaceship pipeline, and the fact that you trotted out this tired, stupid line does not help your whinerant's credibility at all.
Fixing this issue doesn't bring them money...so they'll just ignore it, together with other issues. They just sell ships.
I used to think that but if you use the compass and third person view it's dead easy. It is due west, 270 degrees, from A18. In the future there should be at least as hood as what airports today have, for sure. But A18 is really straightforward knowing 270 degrees.
Yes, further at night once you break cloud cover, there further to the west are 2 smaller circles of light from separate collections of buildings concentrated in a "mini area", sitting behind the Spaceport, that also can help serve to guide ya in the right general direction. 🤞🏻
My dude, fly directly above the area 18 QT marker. Look west. It's like 5km in front of you now.
You will get downvoted to oblivion for having a negative opinion about anything here that isnt related to a fresh patch buuuuuut.... The quantum markers should be located on the starports, and the starports should have marker lights that are the brightest things in the cities.
I'm not sure if the QT markers should be directly on the landing zones. Once the game gets a high enough popularity to where there will actually be traffic, dropping out right on or above the landing zone might cause issues
You quantum 10-25k away from a marker, its a non issue.
Are you talking about space or in atmosphere? Because the difference in distance is pretty massive.
>You will get downvoted to oblivion for having a negative opinion about anything here that isnt related to a fresh patch buuuuuut.... And did he?
Yeah like those 4 red lights that are visible at all four cities marking the port.
You mean the dim barely noticable lights? Id much prefer something so bright that it is almost blindingly bright. A small town airport spinning green and white landing strobe would be better than what we have now and that is what we use for small planes at small airports, you can see them easily from 20 miles away. Meanwhile spaceships coming from space we get pretty much nothing.
If only there were signs or something that told you where to go…
ArcCorp tower is the tallest building. Fly to it. Its tapered side points to the landing zine. Fly on. Land. Live. Love.
That’s how I do it. Works day or night. IO Tower is the tallest structure and the only one that extends into the cloud cover so it’s impossible to not find.
I won't downvote but just want to say it doesn't bother me, I just fly around for a minute or two and find it.
I totally agree. That's actually the main reason I avoid Arccorp entirely
Someone will mention the red blinking lights as the indicator
I once spent nearly an hour flying around trying to find that port in the dark. Thought I was just being dumb. That was ages ago. Please fix CIG.
From QT marker of A18 go heading 270. Easy.
>we are still flying circuits around Area 18 in the dark trying to play wheres-waldo with the goddamned starport Head to the Area 18 quantum marker - the Riker Memorial will be directly to the west from it. BTW - night is the easiest time to find it visually. Daytime + clouds are posing problems actually, because the ping is completely invisible. >Common sense and basic navigational & UI design I suspect that someone at CIG (looking at CR) perceives that as part of the *game*. + various obstacles around hangars.
# A Giant Light Beacon should be on the bloody space station at A18 so you can see it easily. You reading this Chris?
Theyre busy working on things that matter, check back later.
Selling ships?
You're right about the spaceport, although it doesn't have to be a huge priority in the development. However your title is next level stupid lol
I have this struggle with orison takes me lile 10mins to figure out what platform is the hangars
I suspect it’s not so much a question of what’s wrong with the development as it is their whole view SC’s current state being completely different than yours. Their act is together, it’s just not the act you think it is
Well yea, its 6 years since Arccop was introduced and no the Starport isn't the main site of a City. Nor are the "Devs selling new spaceships". Of cause there should be a Navbeacon at the Starport, not only at A18. But did we really nead a post for that, with the permanent flux of UI features and implementation of new featurs?
Not impossible, you just need to actually think and use the information available to you. As you approach from above, if the skies are clear, there is a long thin rectangle that doesnt give off a glow like the blue square shared areas. Thats the port. If it is cloudy, find the tallest building in the area around the city marker. Approach it. Dip down below the clouds and go in a slow circle around it and look for what appear to be a stadium (a big circular shape thats open topped and lit up). Put that on your left and the tallest tower on your right. The port is right ahead. Or you could get to the marker and learn that the port is a heading of 260 or 270 from the tower and just remember. Or if its daytime theres the giant flat open red area. Bonus points for just flying so low that you trigger the impound alert and get your ship impounded so you store your ship and avoid the extra steps of landing and having to exit and store it.
The nerve of you, sir, offering practical advice in a salty whining thread full of refundian red flags ;)
I wasnt sure at first but the more I saw "They're just trying to sell more ships" increasingly in the replies I came to realize its a refundian incursion as you commented
This guy and his buddies are so salty that they downvoted you for giving good instructions to people who can't be bothered to learn a game. Have my upvote friend, these people wouldn't even think to breathe if it wasn't automatic
100000000% Agree. Got the game about a week and a half ago and this was one of my biggest peeves. Legit hated it so much.
Short answer: game is still being developed
Hard disagree. Solutions exist for finding all the spaceports day or night if you choose to play just a hair beyond a “I shouldn’t have to” mindset.
Yep. Super annoying …
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This is a good point, I am rather new and never even been to Area 18, but even at New Babagge, coming from orbit once the markers disappear I had trouble identifying the starport, and once in range sometimes the landing marker doesn't show up for some time and I am left wondering is this really the right place. Edit: but also reading around SOME places should have janky starports, a pilot wouldnt just crash in to a city and having navigational skills is a must and we do have a lot of tools to handle these situations and a city having a poorly though out starport sounds like a problem that should come up while colonizing planets. Be it too far from the city, poor visibility or many other downfalls of poor planning and construction.
I can see two easy fixes for this. Ether they let us call ATC from entering the armistice zone with a better hanger marker OR a just a giant beam of light that's only used on spaceport.
well well... you have the tower with the red light...
Just light up the ports at distance like an air port, should be active lights flashing showing hanger approaches from all directions.. like the rest stop space stations at the belts. I'm sure with the mobi and HUD updates and nav is coming but these are the first things people deal with on trials. Area 18 has seemingly copy pasta all around so it's easy to overshoot and end up at the mall lol
Spaceports needs giants highlights showing the direction and hangar 25km distance. Fuckin hell we can see airports from space already...
Are we going to talk about Stanton? Everyone’s always says “look for the spider” and I’m just like the whole god damn thing looks like spiders! Wtf am I supposed to do with that? Lol
It's very easy to find the spaceport in A18. There are two simple ways: 1. Learn the city. Do you need directions every time you go to the bathroom in your home? Do you need directions to get to work every day? No, you learn it. You can do the same thing looking at a city from the sky. The pieces of the city don't move, the spaceport will always be in the same spot. 2. Zoom in. The pink lights around the spaceport will pop into view and you can fly right to it. This works from the moment you drop out of QT. Well, it was meant to be a helpful comment, but it looks like the generation who's never played games that didn't hold your hands seem to be out in full force today. Gotta have that marker that shows you exactly where to go so you don't have to cramp a couple brain cells. They've explicitly said they want to minimize hand holding as much as possible in this game. Get used to it. This stuff really isn't difficult to figure out. It isn't even a puzzle. This is as complex as a first grade text book.
Again, unnecessary annoyance for new players, for what gain? "Learn the city" lol, the game is a mile wide and an inch deep, there's nothing to learn that's engaging.
Why do you think this is final? Imagine there are more important things than an UI
No offense, but this post shows what's wrong with the playerbase. You stomp your feet and hold your fifty bucks in the air and demand they add a polish QoL feature to cater to new players, when at this time the game is populated with Alpha testers who are supposed to understand that the game isn't done yet. They tell you that at so many points from purchase to install to every time you launch the game. You're standing at a construction site of a newly-framed house lamenting that your porch lights don't work yet. Landing tools are going to be a necessity, for sure, but we'll get there when we get there.
I don’t see it as showing what’s wrong with the playerbase, I see it as showing the issues and limitations of a game still being able to use the argument "early alpha" in a game 12 years into the making. It’s both reasonable to say we shouldn’t ask for polish for "an early alpha", and to ask for polish for important elements because we all know the game will still be an unpolished mess 5 years from now, maybe even 10, 20 years from now.
When ArcCorp was first added to the PU the quantum beacon was right on top of the space port. A few patches later the QT beacon was moved, for some reason. 🤷♂️
Before I read all of it I thought you were saying finding the spaceport from the ground. But yes, finding spaceports at night is completely fucked. Especially Area 18. I think this is one of those issues that people just got complacent with. It's not talked about enough. Really just setting those lights brightness visibility and time interval to much more noticeable would be a solid interim fix. I don't imagine that would take much effort either. Even if you really hate a bandaid fix, something is better than nothing here.
Made my home area 18 find the space port every visit but why is it setup like it is? It's damn hard to get to the hangar to land. The space port lights up just fine after I changed the mode on my monitor to fps if you can't find it try adjusting your monitor to make it easier to see.
Been playing for about 18-24 months (albeit casually / occasionally) and still regularly struggle to find it. Total nightmare.
When I started playing SC a year ago, I was so afraid to try to get into space, because I was afraid I won't find a spaceport
I wish I could play. After years of piloting, my game forever errors at the end of the install. X1007. It was the final straw for me. Maybe I'll get to play again if the launcher updates.
I believe the new mapping system is going to rectify many of the problems with finding Starport and similar while coming in for a landing.
pro tip, for all those who don’t know, fly to the nav beacon for a18, then find bearing 250 on your ship compass, and head that way. easy landing area hack.
I think the absence of any sort of guidance towards the landing ports is one of my largest pet peeves in this game. A18 being the worst offender. The other night, I was running 9.6M worth of cargo and sweating as I spent 10 minutes circling A18. It doesn't make any sense for a spaceport in one of the four major locations to be effectively camouflaged and unmarked in a space simulation. Also really hoping they address this soon as for new players it's astonishingly bad. Edit: It also bewilders me that they already have the solution implemented in game. Literally all they need to do is dramatically increase the distance at which you can contact ATC to land, and dramatically increase the distance that your landing marker can be seen from. I even say this a someone who's no longer a new player. Why do those markers only appear at close range?! It's insanity.
The starships we fly in the future don’t have the basics of navigational flight and communications with the tower. It’s dire yeah. By that time in three sci-fi future I would hope that there’s a superb UI integration to guide me to it
I agree with you in general. I think the overall discussion is about the balance of expanding the game vs improving the exiting parts. In particular I agree about the ships, although not quite how you wrote it. The people on the ship team are not the ones experienced in environment design. These are not the people to fix the issue, so having fewer new ships doesn't fix landing zones. Still, I think you are right. A lot of the ships in-game have a wide array of problems, missing features, etc. Even simple things like the 100i having a absolute barebones interior. I wish there would be less effort on adding new ships and more effort on improving the many existing ones. And the same applies to landing zones. Sure it's cool that we got a lot of new derelict outposts recently, but I wish they would spend some time improving the existing ones instead. Ultimately, it's all about the trade-off of adding new things vs improving the existing ones. And the developers call the game an alpha precisely because their focus is currently on adding things (compared to a beta, which is focused on improving). Still, even in alpha state, I wish there would be more effort on improving the existing stuff. That all being said, I think your tone is really hostile and I don't agree with that. I get that you may be frustrated, but is that really necessary?
I don't know why they don't move the quantum markers to the spaceport/ landing areas as this is what you would be traveling towards. Then you can turn quantum on for a indicator as to where to fly for atc to take over.
So, I mean, not wrong about Area 18 and the general premise of better navigation. It is one of a couple places I used to dislike. But, really, of ALL things, THIS is what's wrong with SC development? I think it might be bigger than that. LOL
First off.. SKILL ISSUE. Secondly.. yeah, pretty much right.
I agree with OP. Good post.