Alpha 5.5.0: now you fly the landing yourself

In our last devlog, Zero-G's planets got a new terrain engine built from real NASA elevation data, and your ship appeared on the surface at its true size. But getting down there was still a button press. Not anymore. In Alpha 5.5.0 you fly over the terrain in real time, alone or alongside other players, and put your ship down exactly where you choose.

Your ship's stats decide how it flies

Every ship now has three new numbers on its card:

• Cruise turn rate: how fast it rotates, driven by its mass and maximum G. A scout turns. A loaded hauler argues.
• Maximum Landing Speed: the impact your landing gear and shields can absorb. It counts total speed, horizontal plus vertical, so drifting sideways while descending gently still hurts.
• Mining Range: how close to a deposit you must be to mine it.

Two views, one landing

The cruise screen splits in two. On the left, a top-down map that zooms down to true scale, where ships, buildings and ore deposits are drawn at their real size. On the right, an elevation profile of the ground ahead and behind, so you can see the ridge before you hit it. Two keys do most of the work. Q kills your vertical speed and holds you in a hover. V freezes your descent rate so it stops accelerating. Hover over your spot, let go, let the descent build toward your safe limit, press V, and ride it down. Live readouts show the shield and armour damage a touchdown would cost at your current speed, so you always see it before it happens. Come in too hard and the worst case is empty shields, one point of armour, and a trip to repairs.

Mining means flying to the ore

The mining screen now shows how far your ship is from every deposit, and you can only start mining once you are inside your range. Finding ore with probes was the first half. Landing close enough is now the second.

What it is for

Putting a ship anywhere on a planet is the groundwork for what comes next: owning land and building bases on it. That is not in the game yet. The flying and the landing are. It is still alpha. The textures repeat, and there are fewer ships than there should be.

Read the written guide

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