Need idea about player spaceship landing on planets

So in my sci-fi campaign the party just got their first spaceship. In the spaceship's docking bay is a small shuttle.

Here's my dilemma. I want to limit the party's ability to land the main spaceship planetside, but I don't want to rule it out entirely. I want them to use the little shuttle whenever they have to land and make taking the main spaceship planetside for emergencies only.

Any ideas on how to do this that doesn't seem contrived?

It is contrived. Why not allow them to land their spaceship?

You could just make it like Star Trek - the big ships can't land. But if, as you say, you don't want to do that, perhaps just make it difficult and dangerous?

Just have the landing gear broken on the main ship.

Whatever way you contrive to do this, you will just be frustrating your players and making less inclined to play in your world.

Calithorne said:

Whatever way you contrive to do this, you will just be frustrating your players and making less inclined to play in your world.

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In Ashen Stars, this is how it goes - the player's main starship must stay in orbit, and they have a shuttle to go planetside. It is no big deal, and does not frustrate the players at all. It is simply understood that this is how it works. They can buy a variety of juiced-up shuttles if they want special capabilities planetside.

The real question - why do you want them to land their main ship?

Not knowing your tech level and hardness of your science, this may not work, but...

Once we've become more commonly interplanetary/star-faring, it's likely that spaceships will be built in space or in gravity-light zones, and for practical purposes be designed primarily or exclusively for space travel. Spaceships don't need to worry about aerodynamics, collapse from outside pressures, etc. Could very well be that large blocky spaceships are more practical for jaunts in space, but due to weight, shape, and "uni-tasker" design are simply not suitable for travel through an atmosphere. Heavily armored to defend against the rigors of hard radiation, a pressureless vacuum, and space battles, these ships are just big lead weights. Could they land? Sure - if you had enough fuel to lower it slowly against gravity and to minimize atmospheric effects, and then to take off again, assuming that was even possible. On the other end, it could also be that these craft are built of light-weight materials to minimize fuel needs, and use some high-tech radiation shielding, and therefore be sort of "flimsy" compared to standard aircraft. Imagine the International Space Station trying to land.

If your tech is more of the "magical" sort like Star T/W/r/a/e/r/k/s, it's harder to reasonably justify not landing the big craft short of politics, military concern, or more magic. Like, landing a craft bigger than X breaks a treaty, is against an accord, looks suspicious, can't be hidden from enemies, etc. From a magical physics angle, maybe the "star drive" used to fly the thing doesn't work in a significant gravity well or atmosphere, thus it has to rely on chemical fuels and you're back to it being too heavy or such. Dunno.

In Star Trek, the smaller ships like Voyager and that Bird of Prey from the movies would land on a planet sometimes.

But they probably shouldn't. Planets are dirty. Space is pretty clean. You'd put a lot of wear on a ship landing on planets, even with anti-gravity, just by exposing it to the elements.

Thanks for the good ideas everyone.

If you are tracking fuel for your spaceships, I would make takeoff / landing very fuel expensive.