Fly your vessel to the docking bay airlock. Coriolis starport schematics, displayed in the Pilot’s Interface when you lock the starport into your targeting computer, show arrows on the faces of the starport that point to the airlock to help you locate it.
Once you have located the airlock, fly through it, taking care to match rotation and avoid collisions with the airlock walls and other vessels using the starport.
Inside the docking bar the starport will engage your ship’s rotational assist. After passing through the airlock and into the docking bay, locate and fly towards your allotted pad, which will be illuminated with a holographic descent path that also displays the pad number. Once in the airlock, your nav-compass will target your allotted pad, helping you to locate it.
Before attempting to dock, deploy your ship’s landing gear using the LANDING GEAR command.
You will not be able to dock unless your landing gear is deployed.
Note that when your landing gear is deployed, your flight characteristics change: your ship’s top speed is reduced as a safety precaution
You can also define landing gear override commands in Options > Controls from the Main Menu, allowing you to alter your control scheme to make landing easier, for example by swapping head-look commands for yaw.
Once you have flown close to your allotted pad the sensor disc in the Pilot’s Interface is replaced by a docking assist element that shows your ship’s attitude and position in relation to the pad. Using this element, line up your ship centrally above the pad, parallel to it, with the schematic of your ship pointing away from you in the docking assist element. When you are in the correct position, the pad schematic will highlight blue.
Slowly lower your ship straight down onto the pad. When you are close enough, the pad’s docking clamps will engage and secure your ship, completing the docking process.
