X4 Foundations is a bit like the less attractive child of EVE Online and Starfield.

I really wanted to get into the game without resorting to guides or YouTube videos, but I failed at one of the very first steps – landing my space craft.

You start by getting close enough to a place you can dock (around 5 or 6km so far) and requesting permission through a right click menu. If granted you get little green animated lines indicating where you should fly. This bit is relatively straight forward, although you can run into things.

The little green lines become an image of your ship on the correct landing pad. You fly until you are hovering sort of somewhere over it. Initially it was a bit disconcerting because you can’t look below you, and aligning your ship to look downwards tends to make a mess of the process. Luckily I realised that this does not require you to be particularly precise.

Later I looked up the various internal and external views and changing camera angles, but it wasn’t really required for most of my landings. That was more helpful reversing out from under overhangs and the like.

The bit I got stuck on was the landing guidelines once you were above the landing pad. After a couple goes in the tutorial I still hadn’t worked it out. The guidelines are red – but turn Green when you are pointing in the right direction, have moved forwards or backwards correctly, and moved left and right correctly. Or at least, that is what I thought.

A 90 second YouTube video resolved my confusion – with the guideline for your left and right movements not actually turning Green, but just needing to be aligned properly. Once I realised that I was able to lower myself until the automatic landing kicked in.

A nice touch is that the allocated landing bay can change between visits, and it seems for different ship sizes.

I note there are software upgrades which automate the landings – but they cost substantially more than your starter money.

The joystick and throttle make the process of flying to the landing bay easier, but I use the keyboard for the more precise alignment of the guidelines.

I am not sure how long it will take until the novelty of landing wears off, but my first hurdle was, well, hurdled.