auto landing gear

[hypo]

auto landing gear s.p.h and v.a.b .say deploy at 80 to 100 meters high or less or more. ?

[montyben101]

To be honest I don't have any problem with manual landing gear. All you have to do is press G

[LeadMagnet]

All the Space Shuttle pilots had to do is flip a switch, but the computer still dropped the landing gear automatically, so they could concentrate on flying.

This could be implemented easily as a system setting.

Auto gear down {radio yes/no}

Gear down altitude {slider 1 to 500?}

Would make a nice feature. Agreed!

[allmappedout]

Consider the situation when someone may not want all their gears to deploy? For example, landing a base piece which has wheels and gears to raise it up?

The best suggestion RE: gears is to see them fully extended in the VAB/SPH, that would be more useful.

[LeadMagnet]

A good point. However, someone building a craft with both wheels and gear would probably not want this "feature" turned on.

Thinking on it, making the selection a right-click option (like the raise/lower) to auto deploy may be better.

But I can see this getting complicated quickly. :|

[FEichinger]

Let's ask this from a different angle: When do you forget to deploy the gears in time? I can't picture any situation whatsoever.

[LeadMagnet]

On the VAB side, never. On the SPH, only when I'm doing something "only Jeb would try"!

[allmappedout]

Let's ask this from a different angle: When do you forget to deploy the gears in time? I can't picture any situation whatsoever.

This is a great question, and one that should be asked of a lot more suggestions.

"Does not having this actually make it harder, or am I just looking looking for a quick shortcut?"

[LeadMagnet]

Well I look at it kinda like drag chutes. They deploy (full envelope, I know they must be staged), automatically, when at 500 meters relative. Why not landing gear?

[allmappedout]

They don't deplay automatically - once they have been activated, that's when they're deployed. The difference is that there isn't sufficient air pressure to pull them from their 'fairing', so they don't pop out. Once the air pressure is enough, then they appear. The drag model on them is shockingly bad, but the idea is that the drag is meant to be a function of air pressure, but it's coded as a function of height instead (which for all intents and purposes is the same thing at sea level).

I'm sure that chutes will get a reworking once the aero coding is done, but they have only one, singular purpose, which is to slow you down when you are falling. Landing gear are much more versatile - you could put one on one side to angle your craft at a specific angle, or, like others say, you may have multiple sets of landing legs, to cater for different heights when docking.

My point is that the benefit of deploying them automatically doesn't add anything to the game. It's one button press, which you can do at any point. I don't want to have to config when my landing legs come down every single time, I'm happy just to press G and be done with it, but with the possibility to add more functionality through action groups - what about ladders, why wouldn't they automatically deploy at the same time? etc

There's just no real benefit for adding this, in my opinion.