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Soft Landing Manager

Automatically manage your thrusters to land safely on planets while optimizing your fuel and energy use. Also, it autolevels your ship, scans the ground below, and guides your ship during the descent to avoid slopes and (hopefully) land on flat terrain !

What, yet another suicide burn/hoverslam script ?
Yes... but specifically designed for use with :
- inverse square law gravity mods such as Real Orbits
- high speed limit mods such as 1000m/s speed mod

If you're not using both of these, then the script is not really needed. However if you do, then you know it's much harder to manually manage landing on planets having gravity fields extending more than 100km above the surface, and ships capable of descending at dangerously high speeds, without depleting your tanks or slamming on the ground at high speed because of a deceleration burn started a few seconds too late.

In addition, it's even more useful for :
- ships with realistic vertical thrust (ex : capable of only 1.5g upwards)
- planets with diameters larger than 120km (Console Spawn Planet)

Version 2 - 2025-05-29 - Large update adding terrain avoidance, ship leveling, and more !

- computes and follows an optimal vertical speed profile for the descent
- prioritizes electric thrusters (atmospheric and ion) before using hydrogen ones, to save on H2
- uses a radar (raycasts from a downward facing camera) to measure your altitude way above what the game normally provides (useful for planets with gravity extending more than 100km from them!)
- (new in v2) keeps your ship level (copy of Flight Assist "Hover Smart" mode)
- (new in v2) scans the terrain below the ship and guides it down the slopes to find flat terrain for a safe landing
- (updated in v2) computes and show the maximum gravity that your ship can handle for all atmosphere densities
- provides an estimate of the surface gravity for the planet
- warns if the ship is not capable of landing on the planet
- automatically deploy parachutes if about to crash
- supports all Vanilla thrusters and Aryx-Lynxon Drive Systems

- (recommanded) configure the names of the ship controller (cockpit, helm etc.)
- (needed for terrain avoidance) install one or two downwards facing camera on your ship, with the proper tag in their names
- (optional) configure LCDs, timers, sound blocks etc. as needed, see below for the functions they provide
- install the script in a programmable block
- recompile the script to let it autoconfigure itself

- Set your ship in the gravity field of a planet
- Activate mode1 or mode2 to have the script manage your descent
- (optionnally) Set vacuum or atmosphere mode, or select a planet to optimize the descent profile
- Steer your ship to land on flat ground or let it manage it automatically (you can provide inputs at any time that will override automatic horizontal guidance)
- Once landed, check if the script automatically switched to mode0 (off), if not turn it off yourself

See a detailed user manual on Github :
https://github.com/silverbluemx/SE_SoftLandingManager

- off : turns the script off (the LCDs still give you information about your ship capabilities)
- mode1 : activate a descent mode that prioritizes electric thrusters (atmospheric and ions) It fires the ion thrusters early to bleed the gravitational potential energy and reduce the work left for the hydrogen thrusters. However this uses more total electrical energy than mode2
- mode2 : activate a faster descent mode that fires thrusters only when needed. It is possible to switch between mode1 and mode2 during the descent, for example use mode2 to let the ship pick up speed, and then switch to mode1 to try and maintain that speed using ion thrusters
- mode3 : the script only manages autoleveling (copy of Flight Assist "Hover Smart" mode)
- vacuum : tell the script to expect vacuum at the planet surface (atmo thrusters won't work, max ion efficiency)
- atmo : tell it to expect atmosphere at the planet surface (atmo thrusters will work, low ion efficiency)
- unknown : tell it that the surface atmosphere conditions are unknown (default setting), the script will consider the worst-case scenario considering the thruster mix of your ship, to be on the safe side
- earth, mars, pertam etc. : optimize the script for the selected planet from the catalog
- angleoff, angleon and angleswitch configure whether terrain avoidance will tilt the ship to guide it during descent
- thrustersoff, thrusterson and thrustersswitch same for the forward/back/left/right thrusters
- leveloff, levelon and levelswitch : switch on/off the autoleveling
- Arguments can be combined together (ex : mode1mars, mode1angleoffthrusterson)

Add the following tags to your ship functional blocks, as needed. The tags can be changed in configuration, if needed.

SLMref RECOMMANDED : Reference controller (seat, cockpit, etc.) to use for the ship orientation. This is optional, if the script doesnt find a controller with this name then it tries to find another suitable controller on the grid.

SLMradar RECOMMANDED : Name of downward-facing camera used as a ground radar (to measure altitude from very long distance and also account for landing pads above or below a planet surface). It is recommanded to have two of them and they need to have unobstructed view below the ship with a wide angle of view.

SLMignore OPTIONAL : Include this tag in any block that you want this script to ignore. For example, thrusters on an auxiliary drone.

SLMdisplay OPTIONAL : Name of the main display for the script (there can be any number of them, or none at all)

SLMdebug OPTIONAL : Additional debug display for the script (there can be any number of them, or none at all)

SLMlanding OPTIONAL : Name of timer blocks that will be triggered a little before landing (ex : extend landing gear)

SLMliftoffOPTIONAL : Name of timer blocks that will be triggered a little after liftoff landing (ex : retract landing gear)

SLMon OPTIONAL : Name of timer blocks that will be triggered when the SLM activates (ex : by the command "mode1")

SLMoff OPTIONAL : Name of timer blocks that will be triggered when the SLM disactivates (ex : by the command "off", or at landing)

SLMsound OPTIONAL : Name of a sound block used to warn if expected surface gravity is higher than what the ship can handle or the ship is in panic mode (incapable of slowing down enough)


More info (with FAQ and troubleshooting tips) on Github :
https://github.com/silverbluemx/SE_SoftLandingManager

If the script doesn't turn off when landed, check what altitude reading you get when stable on the ground, and put that value in altitude_offset in the configuration.

Use adjustable landing legs combined with my other script to land on uneven terrain.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3388676061

Planets in the images :
Tohil by Major Jon : https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2296726670
Pyke by Elindis : https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3028738424

Ships in the images : my own

Some features and code are copied from Flight Assist by Naosynth.

Feel free to use the comment section.