B5 jump gates - Surface gates possible?

[Radomir]

Hi, everyone!

I've been using orbiter for about 2 months now. I can do many things with the stock Delta glider, the only thing I'm not good in yet, is interplanetary travel using transfer orbits, so I use dbartles2's B5 jump gate addon to get around the Solar System quickly. I did some editing to the gate.ini file to make the gate network more realistic, for example, in the Jovian moon system only Callisto has a gate orbiting it, because that's the only moon that's not in Jupiter's magnetic field, thus it's safe to go there.

What I'd like to do is, to place some gates onto the surface of some terrestrial planets and moons, for example the Moon's gate could be next to Brighton Beach to quickly transport goods that are needed for the colony there, but Venus would have an orbital gate, because it wouldn't be a good idea to go to the surface of Venus for obvious reasons.

So here's what I did: I used scenario editor to place the moon's gate onto the surface next to Brighton Beach.

When I go from a surface gate to an orbital gate, then it works fine, but if I arrive at a surface gate, (doesn't matter that I arrive from an orbital gate, or another surface gate), I don't arrive at the gate, instead I arrive somewhere along the planet's equator.

Is someone who's familiar with this addon knows, how to make surface gates correctly, either by scenario or gate.ini editing, so I arrive in the gate, instead of somewhere on the planet's equator?

 

[Sherrif of Nottingham]

Well, I personally think that gates on the surface are 1.) Unrealistic and 2.) Unfair...

1.) because the idea of jumpgates is that your making a controlled matter storm or black hole or some other kind of thing. Who knows what will happen when gravity is applied. I mean, I would be afraid of sending the moon through a gate. (I know that physics for this may be also incorrect but still... you get the point)

2.) Really, wheres the fun of Orbiter if you just appear next to the surface base you wish to go to?

But If I would have to guess, the gate sets your orbital speed... that way you sync perfectly onto the gate's COG when you exit. So it may make you jump when NOT in orbit.

 

[Radomir]

Yeah, you're right it doesn't look right that there's a huge gate next to Brighton Beach, and it isn't really time consuming to find the gate in orbit since it has a 1000km XPDR range. On Callisto you don't even need to sync orbits, just hover up, and if it's currently orbiting above you, you just need to sync velocities, since Callisto is so small. I even managed to find the gate in Saturn's orbit in about 10-15 minutes (with some time acceleration of course) when I used the Saturnian gate to fly back to Earth after a mission to Titan.

 

[fort]

Hi, everyone!
Is someone who's familiar with this addon knows, how to make surface gates correctly, either by scenario or gate.ini editing, so I arrive in the gate, instead of somewhere on the planet's equator?

I've made it in the past with a jump gate (wich model ? The one with three big concentric circles turning on themselves) and the gate was landed on earth (a little island near from France/Bretagne) . I do not remember where was the starting gate (maybe in orbit around earth). I've made it with a standard DG. All of that for fun.

Depending of the position inside the starting gate at the moment of the transfert, my position at arrival was a little bit different at each time and it was not so easy to control the situation at maybe one kilometer at the end above ground, but not desesperate (if the time you have to do it is, nevertheless, really short).

So i think that you can make it if the jump gate you use is the same.

I do not remember if i had change in that circumstance the size of the gate or not.

good day.