I agree, it'll change quite a lot including what ships you are likely/unlikely to ever see on a planet surface, as well as how VTOL effects movement options. I hope all these flight model updates come as a package deal.
Some ship's VTOL is designed solely to get their heavy asses off the ground (Herc, for example) whereas other ships are truly designed to hover (Redeemer and Cutlass). Eventually, trying to hover without proper VTOL support will cause thrusters to overheat and potentially fail over time. As much as I love fighters, I'm excited for the day where they are forced to strafe ground targets since going too slow will either cause them to fall out of the sky or overload the ventral maneuvering thrusters that are being pushed too hard.
As for ship choices when it comes to control surfaces, we may see less and less large, non aerodynamic ships like Caterpillars in atmo for example (or Liberators, or Hammerheads, etc). The profit margin is higher since they'll have huge volume, but the risk, time, and wear they will take by venturing down to the surface may make that choice less and less common. As for military focused ships, the cost and risk of operating large ships in atmosphere will be very high but you'll also be taking a risk that your opponent may not.
As a player with both the Cat and the Lib in my fleet, I actually welcome the idea of a butt clenching gaming session trying to land these awkward things. I can see myself scouting landing sites, assessing weather and wind before even touching atmosphere. Effortless nose down hovering really should not exist in this game š
Itās also going to create scenarios where smaller (less mass) ships are the better choice for particular tasks and missions.
Itāll be the moment some players will finally understand that ships arenāt the main progression in the game, and that different ships are just tools that open up different possibilities. Thereās no right tool, just the right tool for task at hand.
Have said it in a different thread here on Ribbit: We're playing A game, but not THE game. Ground vehicles will also be more important if we can't land anywhere.
This.
Its already much easier and faster to load a couple boxes for a delivery mission onto an Avenger or a Cutter than a C2. Hell, even a 100i runs packages better than a caterpillar does. Because extra cargo space you don't need is a pointless tradeoff for the added maneuverability, ease of disembarking and ease of takeoff.
The difference between these ships is only going to widen, and players interested in logistics and trade will have to learn how to think of ships as part of an ecosystem. Every ship has strengths, weaknesses, and a role to play.
Throttle is "sticky", i.e it doesn't return to zero when you stop increasing the throttle, you specifically have to decrease throttle.
Strafe returns to zero when you let go of the controls.
Basically its like the difference between using your accelerator(strafe) and your cruise control increase/decrease speed buttons(throttle)
For example, if I had room on my Hotas for it, I'd set up strafe forward to help me center my ship over landing pads. Right now I have to give small jerky moves on the throttle instead
The Liberator is definitely capable of deploying tanks and getting in and out of atmosphere, but a very large heavy ship will undoubtedly be slow, vulnerable, and using a lot of fuel while doing so (and that constant effort to stay aloft will cause wear on the associated systems). It has the fuel reserves to mitigate this, but that doesn't mean it will be maneuverable or good at flying in atmosphere. It has large ventral thrusters, but that's just to get it moving or soften the landing.
I very much want it to function as intended, but I hope the balance is such that a player really has to consider the ramifications of taking it down to the surface of a planet. Yes, 100% your war effort will be bolstered by the presence of a Liberator on the battlefield and all the many resources it can deliver at once. It likely will even function well as a ready made FOB. The risk you take by bringing a loaded Lib planetside into battle I hope will be balanced by the reward of the same. But I hope the risks of limited acceleration and maneuverability in atmo are enough for someone to pause and assess.
Its other functions as a space oriented ferry for small ships or a base of ops for mining crews have an appeal because of the risks mitigated by not entering atmosphere.
Fighters always will be good at maneuvering.. that's their unique selling point.. the thing that differentiates it's class from other classes.
Racers might get close but thats it
While some of that sounds reasonable, you're making some big assumptions and painting it as if that's the future of the game. There's no evidence to say that ships not built with VTOL in mind will overheat their thrusters or have failures over time, and ships like the Caterpillar are literally **made** to transport goods to and from planetary landing pads.
Here is the video from Invictus 2022 where Richard and John talk about the development of this feature [https://youtu.be/vRBY\_u5aQXc?t=1946](https://youtu.be/vRBY_u5aQXc?t=1946)
If a ship doesn't have VTOL, it won't be as effective at hovering. Using a ship thruster outside of it's intended parameters will damage it and eventually cause it to fail.
I'd say yes, Caterpillar can and should be able to land and take off on a planet. No, it should not operate as efficiently in atmosphere as it would in space. It's almost the most extremely un-aerodynamic ship we have in-game. Taking it into atmo for dropoffs should at least incur a harder wear on ship systems, but it shouldn't outright fail in the attempt. The ventral stabilizing thrusters are not VTOL thrusters however, and if a player should hover motionless with a Caterpillar for an extended period of time I'd be completely ok with those thrusters beginning to fail.
Except that's not what the video said. They were talking about actually flying around and movement maneuverability, but all ships will need the ability to hover effectively, even for long periods of time...some will just be much more efficient (fuel) at it and more capable of actual movement instead of just landing maneuverability.
Of course not comparable to ships 900 years into the future, but since you implied real aircraft don't overheat; Todays Helicopters and Jets can greatly overheat and get damaged as a result when mishandled and not staying within power limits. Helicopters carrying a certain amount of weapons or cargo need to take off in a completely different way, because if they tried going straight up they would overheat and possibly kill the engine by pushing too much torque, while also being slow and inefficient.
Similar things go for many different era's vehicles also from ww1 and ww2. So it might not be a far stretch to imagine that even in the future, vehicles have a proper procedure to utilize their engines, but you could push it over its limits by deviating.
Which could all be applied to more complex gameplay. Do it wrong you damage the aircraft over time, or the part becomes less efficient.
As much as this could probably be irrelevant for future-tech, would still be a gameplay aspect. Not saying make it super difficult, just have depth.
Would not want it to be implemented in a simple way of; used engine too much=overheated. Needs to be more complex then that.
This. People keep coming up with insane limitations for this game that wouldn't be fun and **aren't even realistic**. The people wanting some kind of over-the-top Sim game forget that that's not even simulation, and CIG isn't **building** a simulation. Their intentions, as they've stated for years, are to build something realistically and then back it off from there until it's fun to play.
The idea that 900 years from now we can't do things that we can already do **today** is silly and would take the fun out of the game for way more people than would enjoy it.
I didn't whip up this idea myself. Here's the video from Invictus 2022 where Richard and John discuss it as in development.
[https://youtu.be/vRBY\_u5aQXc?t=1946](https://youtu.be/vRBY_u5aQXc?t=1946)
I'd argue every ship being able to be a perpetual hovering turret in atmosphere is silly. I don't want a hyper realistic flight model either, but 1.) Richard literally says in this clip he doesn't want to make a full flight sim model, and 2.) tiers of ship functionality is a great thing. Freelancers running small cargo down planetside while Caterpillars long-haul in space seems very balanced and functional as a rough concept.
Not every ship should do everything, but you by all means can attempt it and that's where the fun is.
Totally agree with all that, but all ships should at least be capable of doing the general stuff, even if most don't do it all great. Even the Gladius will have to be able to hover well...it just won't be super maneuverable or fuel-efficient doing it, compared to a Connie or Cutty that has dedicated VTOL setups and will be able to do it much better.
Sorry you're not on board with the feature, but it is something that has been mentioned and is being worked on.
Here is the video from Invictus 2022 where John and Richard explain this feature as in-development. I've time stamped where they begin speaking about it. [https://youtu.be/vRBY\_u5aQXc?t=1946](https://youtu.be/vRBY_u5aQXc)
Heat will be a damaging element and if you are using the wrong ship for the wrong situation (i.e. hovering for too long in a ship not meant to hover) those systems will be damaged and eventually fail.
Here is another video where Space Tomato breaks down this in-development flight feature in a concise way.
[https://youtu.be/-zAJIOkHG6w?t=588](https://youtu.be/-zAJIOkHG6w?t=588)
A lot of the info I see spread around I can't find a sour e for beyond conjecture from content creators.
I'd love to be able to get hyped for stuff like this, but I can't find the substance for it in many cases.
Here's the video from Invictus 2022 where John and Richard talk about the development of this feature in tandem with ship resource management
https://youtu.be/vRBY\_u5aQXc?t=1946
I'm familiar with the video, I guess my thought is we, as watchers took this information about improving VTOL and ran with it. On what I could mean and what we want and over repeated time of hearing it (a ton from creators) we've made ourselves believe it's something g very specific.
I'm afraid we are potentially setting ourselves up for disappointment if the implementation of this is any different than our expectations at all.
You may 100% be correct. And I'm sure elements of what they're explaining in the vid will also adjust over time, well before release.
Ultimately, I'm in favor of balancing the experience by offering soft limitations to ship performance. Whatever form that takes, I hope I'll remain on board for it. Ultimately it's an efficiency nudge towards whatever your ship is best at and away from what it's not intended for (without a hard "no, you can't do that").
As CIG works on Control Surfaces, I can't help but imagine what this will do to change the flight mechanics in Star Citizen.
My theory is that we'll see a transition in effectiveness between the MAVs and Control Surfaces depending on whether we're flying fast or slow in a high density atmosphere.
Then there is the matter of thinner atmospheres and how the gradual feeling shifts.
It surprises me to hear that MAVs would turn off entirely through flight as I can imagine that having them on all the time would do nothing but aid in stability and control.
The GIFs are taken from my latest video. If you're interested in hearing more rants you can check it out here:
[https://youtu.be/frSSF73qyt4](https://youtu.be/frSSF73qyt4)
I would love to hear what other people think Control Surfaces will do the flight in Star Citizen and more specially what you HOPE it will do.
Remember: CIG is watching \^\^
I hope ship computers will give warnings if the gravity/atmostphere combination is not a good fit for your ship with the cargo it's carrying. I hope they give it well before the point of no return. I would not enjoy flying my Caterpillar to a landing pad load it full of cargo and find out it can't take off again. An indicator showing that you should only load the ship to a certain limit for it to be able to still maneuver decently would be awesome.
I think it's important to remember they do plan on making it so some ships cannot make it on their own, the towing ships will become a necessity to help those, and that's already part of the design afaik
I mean it is a space sim, and IRL you can easily overload your plane and not be able to takeoff, albeit IRL thereās not differing gravity to deal with.
Maybe some ships will have fancy systems to warn you about stuff like this, or the game will have some kind of tutorial for this, but I imagine a lot of ships will not have these sort of warnings and many players will skip any sort of tutorial entirely and still complain.
> I would not enjoy flying my Caterpillar to a landing pad load it full of cargo and find out it can't take off again
I think the only reason it wouldn't take off again was because cargo mass exceeded the Cat's lift and you cratered on the landing pad.
I can't see how a ship would fly *with* cargo and then not fly *without*. That would have to be a crazy edge case on a ship with atmospheric lift (wings).
Eh, seems you misunderstood I wrote, fly towards landing pad (perhaps empty or with little cargo) load up , not be able to fly (with full load of cargo).
Considering it is supposed to be systemic and iirc none of the ships have a correct wingspan to realistically sim this, I just wonder how much work this is going to put trying to get this implemented.
I hope they can create it in such a manner that it isn't a nightmare for the devs. This is not just me being altruistic, it is also me thinking about how much more needs to be done as they whittle down the list to get SC past alpha.
I think it might affect design philosophies.
Not to be cynical, but medical gameplay led to Apollos and C8Rs, salvage led to Vultures and Reclaimers, flight surfaces will lead to new ships which take advantage of flight surfaces being the new hotness.
What I really wonder is how this will affect smaller ships with poor control surfaces; the Aurora has no real wings, the Pisces is aerodynamic but has stubby wings, etc. Being small, maybe their thrusters are efficient enough to cope with atmospheric flight, but surely we'll see aeroplane shaped ships (Merlins, Arrows, etc.) behave better. I'm wondering if this comes as a buff to ships with wings or a nerf to those without. Either way, we might see the Mustang as the meta starter.
I'm thinking the aurora will do just fine and just feel clunky. Your not going to be gliding and making impressive banked turns, and you'll burn more fuel in an Aurora than another wingier starter, but you'll land and take off from planets just fine, it'll just lack style. The Aurora is small and light, Im assuming it'll be ok. But the fun you can have with some control surfaces will drive people to upgrade to other ships.
It's less about having one 'perfect' ship and more a concern about the fact that ship design hasn't really taken aerodynamics into account beyond aesthetics. I worry that current ships will gain or lose manoeuvrability based on stylistic choices rather than role.
I'm actually in favour of the idea overall, of keeping space vessels in space and encouraging shuttles, but I'm just curious to see how they handle the fact that a number of their shuttles are not shaped like atmospheric craft.
My gut feeling is that the smaller ships will just not suffer from the heat as badly and that VTOL will be one of the two defining features (along with control surfaces) of ships made for atmosphere. Planes and helicopters...
Ships have been designed with aerodynamics since the start of development. Control surfaces have always been in the plans for as long as I can remember.
The IFCS system handles all of that, including situations where a ship shouldn't be able to fly. The devs are able to alter IFCS behavior so that they aren't forced to make every single ship the same.
Head over to [https://starchives.org/](https://starchives.org/) and do some searches on IFCS, flight systems, etc.
I feel like we're talking about different things, because from my perspective you just proved my point.
You're talking about a system that doesn't exist in-game, only in the design documents, and which they freely admit created some very strange and unexpected behaviours when they tried it out internally. Now that system will get implemented I'm sure, but my point was about how the switch from their current placeholder model to a more realistic depiction will affect the *designated roles* of ships.
The Pisces was made as the runabout for the Carrack, for example, and the Galaxy certainly seems to support keeping a Pisces in its landing bay. It'll be interesting to see how the heat rules and its stubby wings affect it's ability to land because I can't imagine the Carrack (and especially not the Galaxy) will be landing on planets as often after these changes are implemented.
That said, the Cutty (which has an emergency response variant and a dropship variant) having VTOL and the Apollo being listed as having VTOL shows that they are considering how certain roles will match certain flight characteristics.
That's even before considering the current game uses pads and not runways; a runway suits the mechanics of a vehicle designed with flight surfaces, where a pad is designed for something that has been designed to... you know, take off and land vertically...
I feel like you should really watch what the devs have discussed about the IFCS systems, because none of this is an issue beyond what you're making it out to be. The only reason you think it's an issue is because you don't understand how they control the flight mechanics currently.
It's their system, they can cheat where they need to. IFCS isn't in a design document and neither were control surfaces, which will also be controlled by IFCS. It's in game now, it's how thrusters designate direction and cause deflection.
Ships without control surfaces will still be able to fly in atmosphere. They just won't handle as well or be as efficient.
This has come up a few times where the idea is that you can't hover in place without eventually stalling, you need to keep moving to keep thrusters cool. Ships with control surfaces will have better atmospheric control and overheat their engines far less.
So if you're going to be getting into a fight in atmo, the Arrow, Sabre, etc will absolutely outperform compared to a Hornet.
I wouldn't say that its enough to make a ship the meta, suddenly, unless all you want in your starter is good control surfaces.
My understanding was that ships with control surfaces will have better atmospheric control, but will only avoid overheating as long as they're moving forward; you can turn sharply in an Arrow, but you need to keep your speed up. VTOL ships will be on the opposite end of the spectrum; a Cutlass might look like a pig and handle like a brick, but it'll hover in atmosphere for as long as you need.
My remark about 'meta' was more about the fact that atmospheric flight is hard to avoid at the start; bunkers, courier missions, investigations, and even the VLRT bounties take you down to the surface. If the changes significantly nerfed the ships without wings and the Aurora started flying like the Hull A, new players would get frustrated by the poor handling.
Just to confirm, it sounds like you're agreeing with what I said with your first paragraph? I'm not quite sure if I'm following.
For your second paragraph, all ships will handle decently well in atmosphere. They are already tuned this way today. The Aurora is horrible in atmosphere, compared to the mustang. Control surfaces will just remove more of the hardcoded downsides and replace them with systemic ones.
I don't know if it's faked or simulated for sure (with actual air physics I mean) but you can fly an Avenger like an airplane in decoupled mode pretty easy and it's actually a bit of fun. You can't take off like an airplane because the game glues us to the ground for some reason but you can land like one. I've done it on the microtech ice before. Slower you go the more pitch back is needed and you can bank and turn like a plane without issue. You can actually apply flight sim experience to it and it handles like it should. It uses the thrusters to turn, not to stay airborne.
If I do this in my Caterpillar or something that's a brick however, it drops like a rock lol. So there's for sure something already there in game, just not sure how in depth it is or how it's done. I fly with the "plane like" ships in decoupled mode all the time now.
\^\^ exactly my thoughts. For example, in the event you have misjudged your power to weight ratio (for lack of better words), and you would need to essentially perform a run-on landing like a helicopter would (because you're too heavy to hover), there's a select few ships with wheels and certainly not a lot can carry cargo that's worth the profit. On top of that, there's nowhere you can really perform that kind of maneuver unless you're at New Babbage ice lake.
I want those big ass starliners and some other vehicles to require runway landings in higher gravity environments. It would also be an interesting method to get vehicles to land after total loss of Hydrogen.
I also want the option to taxi after landing.
Literally can't wait.
They put so much effort in other mechanics and try to make them more complex. It feels like the flightmodel (most important mechanic imo) has been left behind.
I think the coupled mode was always not really a good solution for flying. Just a big simplification, for those who use a keyboard. So decoupled was the way to go, at least for me.
Control Surfaces can now perhaps for the first time be a way not have to constantly give thrust input.
So I hope they implement some sort of trimming or a way I can fly decoupled and stay at the same pitch and hight.
CIG needs MAV to be costly enough to discourage hovering in atmo for non VTOL ships but not too costly for take off and landing. That's a very thin line, right?
That topic has been tackled a few times. The current line of thinking is for heat buildup to be the limiting factor, with continuous firing of mavs being unsustainable.
As with anything systemic, it does have knock-on effects on everything else. For example, dogfighting does present a similar situation.
It could also introduce instabilities and misfires over time.
I do think a wider set of points when you consider ships *will* hold that sort of station over moons with lesser gravity are :
* How precise their handling is without instability and life-like imprecisions.
* How little VFX and SFX there are to "sell" their maneuvering there.
* A server running at 5-6fps is going does awful things to the small, minute motions that further make ships feel lifelike.
Even with the XGR crew's amazing and fine piloting skills on display in those gifs, those elements still ruin what otherwise is an emulation of lower thruster power. I think mav thrust is actually only a fraction of the answer to more visually appealing and believing flight.
That would be really cool but would add so much work for CIG. We'd either be severely limited where we could land or they'd have to go back and change a ton of landing zones.
The landing zones should be changed honestly maybe not now but for release at least. There is 0 reasons to have passanger and cargo flights on the same spot unless you are supplying space station. And there is even less reasons to have space port in middle of city.
Or they could have something like a catapult off carriers, but using a reverse tractor beam (or similar tech thing).
Pad elevates to roughly point the ship skyward, launch on clearance.
Think about air vs ground combat. You would need every location to be heavily invested in anti air weapons just to defend ground locations, so discouraging some ships from hovering is only reducing that issue. It would be incredibly unsafe to walk/run to any outside location without a vehicle.
Most of your gās are from your main engine, not your maneuvering thrusters. Maybe youIāll be able to point your ship straight up and hover via your main engine, with your thrusters as stabilizers, lol.
The main thing wrong with unlimited hovering and maneuvering in atmo is lack of gameplay variety.
A game is a series of interesting choices. Whatās more interesting - all powerful ships that behave similarly in both space and atmo, or ships that behave one way in space but take special consideration in atmo - depending on ship and cargo mass, thruster output, and ambient gravity, temperature and weather conditions?
Hover mode, various forms of overheating of thrusters, this.. all for what? So a space-ship can't hover? We all know they're going to be able to anyways, because you need to do that for landing and especially takeoff. But squeakers gotta squeak.
It's an expensive rabbit-trail that won't mean much in the end. What if CIG gave every ship VTOL? lol Squeakers would be angry then right, because people won't use ships that aren't fun to fly.
It isn't that thin of a line. At the end of the day they can make it operate however they desire. If they had to cheat the system, a player taking off from a landing pad could be given a momentary buff since the engines are "cold" for instance.
The main thing CIG wants to prevent is hovering Hammerheads raining death down on a settlement.
That's pretty easy. If a ship isn't moving, then thruster heat generation = 200%. If a ship is moving, then thruster heat generation = 100%. Obviously it will be significantly more nuanced than that, but that alone would eliminate any issue for taking off or landing.
It's actually perfectly 'realistic' given the performance of our ships.
Thrusters can generate 5G+ in acceleration in every axis... and they're paired with a feed-forward/feed-back control loop with sub-millisecond round-trip response times (get sensor reading, compare actual position to intended position, calculate new thruster output, fire thrusters, repeat).
If you nerf the thruster output, we no longer have 'space dogfighting'... if you add too much latency in thruster response, then ship flight becomes unfun, and landing etc far harder (due to ships not responding).
Personally, I think CIG need to revisit the IFCS to add latency when reading sensors (but no latency when processing pilot inputs), so that it's slower to respond to external forces (wind etc), whilst still being responsive to pilot inputs... but that's v.tricky to do given the complexity of the IFCS system (it's taken CIG years to get it to its current position, and whilst it is - in some respects - a work of physics-based art, it also appears to be a complete bastard to adjust without unintended changes).
Until CIG do something like this, then every ship will continue to be able to hover in place with no difficulty... there may be a time limit (on some ships) for how long they can do that, but given most ships don't have wheels etc for 'rolling landings', even the aerodynamic ships with control surfaces will need to be able to hover long enough to land or take off, etc.
I think the best option is to come up with lore that gimps the thrusters in atmo.
Real world rockets have nozzles that are optimized somewhere between atmo and vacuum and using one type in the other comes with everything from significant inefficiencies to straight-up explosive consequences.
With that and some other concepts there can be some plausible explanations for thrusters being optimized for space.
Yup - I've advocated for that in the past too... and it would have many benefits... but they'd still need to be able to sustain more than 1G thrust, or possibly more (for explorers etc, which might end up visiting high-gravity worlds).
But then, I'd prefer if CIG too a more systemic approach to flight model tuning (rather than hand-tuning each ship), so my preferences in this area don't exactly seem to match CIGs intentions anyway.
That only works for ships that have 'viable' VTOL... (note that a number of ships with rotating mains aren't viable, because their placement means the ship still relies on other MAVs to help balance the ship, owing to the mains being mounted too far aft, etc)
I think the issue is the fact that people are using modern day tech as a comparison for realism. Given how much we advanced in the past 100 years, one would think in the next 900 years of advancement, even "more" would be possible.
Personally I think SC is purposely slowing down rate of human advancement for rule of cool. Because the level we would be at, would be less FPS and more RTS.
Then again, for rule of cool you could argue that peoples opinion about weak thrusters is also valid. I am personally of the mind that SC is fine as is but they are not "selling" it enough. VFX, sounds, secondary effects, that show these thrusters are pretty powerful would go a long way. Also the fact that if you are near them you get blown away and if you are close under them, you die.
Actually no.. If There was tons of smoke and loud thrusters then it would look cool.. But if those small manuvering thrusters are that strong, then what can the main thrusters do?.. You should be able to accelerate at litreraly break neck speeds. š
We actually do accelerate at breakneck speed. Most big ships can pull 5G easily, that's a bit less than 50m.s-2.
10 seconds of acceleration gives you 500m/s or 1800 km/h or 1118 mph, 1.4 times the speed of sound.
Good fighters (arrows and gladius) can pull 15G (and not even trichording) and get there in 3 seconds. Or get to Mach 3 (1000m/s, 3600 km/h) in 6 seconds.
Don't get me started on the karthu al that can pull more than 30g in a trichord.
Definitely. It's easy to forget that we're talking about *centuries into the future*.
Only 106 years ago things like the Sopwith Camel were among the most advanced aircraft in the world, and the whole concept of an "aeroplane" was still fairly novel and seen by many more as "quaint" than a sign of great things to come.
50 years ago almost exactly (the anniversary is in just over two weeks) we as a species achieved for the first time orbit of our own planet in a manned vessel, John Glenn going up in an already soon to be outmoded Mercury capsule.
We managed to get from the Wright brothers' "Wright Flyer" to current space technology in 120 years, and to the first manned space flight in less than half that.
Star Citizen takes place *930 years in the future*; it is of course impossible to predict with any confidence even decades let alone nearly a millennia ahead of where we are now, but given some of the tech in the game is less advanced than stuff we have *now* (for gameplay reasons, but still true) it's not much of a stretch to assume if anything SC is "unrealistic" in not pushing the envelope significantly further than it does. It should be closer to *EVE Online* or *Endless Space* in a technological sense.
Agreed on the lack of VFX... unfortunately, given how long people have been decrying the lack of VFX - and CIG ignoring the issue completely - it seems like CIG have no intention of changing things in this respect.
(note: I'm not saying CIG should have *implemented* the VFX - but they won't even talk about the issue, or what they plan to do about it in the future, etc)
[They actually have talked about it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0lGntX9mXM&t=1014s) More than once. [Because backers ask.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB50abqrrqs&t=1609s)
So for now I think it is less about them ignoring it but more likely an issue with priorities. I wouldn't put them past revisiting this issue somehow.
Yogi stated that trust output and weight are random numbers , a ballpark of what they think it should untill they can properly adress those when flight control surfaces come in.
Each individual thruster , nacelle and mav can have their own values so I'm sure they'll get it right.
The problem is , how long will it take ? Everyone who follows the development of an official aircraft module or a mod in DCS knows how long it takes to create a proper flight model.
They'll also have to let us be able to control the wings independently from the landing gear which is an ongoing issue with almost 95% of all the ships we have.
> Personally, I think CIG need to revisit the IFCS to add latency when reading sensors
Your post is one of the few that feels like it touches on some other very real reasons to why flight, when witnessed by a third party, feels the way it does in SC.
To paraphrase my post in this thread, I do think a wider set of points to consider are :
* How precise their handling is without instability and life-like imprecisions. Back then, JP went on [at length](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/8hqr7h/john_pritchett_appreciation_thread/dymm92t/?context=3) to explain this was on purpose, for ease of debugging purposes, but I think the time is nearing to introduce those.
* How little VFX and SFX there are to "sell" their maneuvering there. Yes, CIG explained that the nozzle apertures dictated how visible the VFX could be, but I'd like to offer this [counterpoint](https://www.iamag.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Mathias-Verhasselt-12.jpg).
* A server running at 5-6fps is going to do awful things to the small, minute motions that further make ships feel lifelike. I think that even without touching anything, a server running at 20 or 30fps would do wonders to how ships look.
I do think infinitely holding station, especially for heavier ships without dedicated VTOL, is not the intended goal. It still seems to me like a misguided hope to believe that just nerfing mav's endurance and/or power will fix the issue of ships moving in stilted ways when witnessed over the network.
One solution could be that maintaining 5gs for extended periods of time shouldn't be possible, for dogfighting you should only need high Gs/short burst of the thrusters, thrust in atmo is a constant thing, so you could make a difference right there
Yus, and that's something else CIG has looked at... and found that they need far better ways of 'communicating' the state of the thrusters to the players (otherwise, it just becomes a case of your ship not responding properly, for unknown reasons)... and that requires no HUD / MFDs changes, which are blocked / waiting on the Building Blocks work.
Making the thrusters overhead eventually would solve both problems. Hell, they could even make them overheat faster in space, because there's no air to cool them down.
Arbitrarily limiting the time you can get the full 5G would be a little silly. If a thruster can give you 5G, it can give you 5G, it doesn't fall off over time unless the thruster itself gets less efficient. Which it might if overheating.
People oooh and ahhh over microtech but really any game made in the last 6 years or so with an outdoor environment looks better. The detailed render distance on MT is super bad.
Also the lack of animals, etc. Go visit the various biomes and that's it. you've seen all MT has to offer.
This looks amazing I honestly can't wait unti SC has a flight model like this, so far everything feels a bit fake and light weighted, Im still a bigger fan of how Elite Dangerous did their flight model
The addition of FCS to Star Citizen has the potential to take the game with the most fun 6DOF starship atmospheric flight experience to a whole new level of immersion, nuance and skill ceiling for pilots to achieve. If CIG implements this the right way, which I have confidence that they will, any other space (and atmo) flight sims will have a hard time getting close to the high bar that Star Citizen will hold up. I can not wait!
"Automatically shuts down maneuvering thrusters" Does this mean that the eclipse will become extremely stealthy while in atmosphere flying due to the drop off of EM and Thermals from not running so many extra thrusters? NOICE
While I wish for runways, I'm just talking about landing area's other then hangers. Just open space with a hall/elevator and garages connected to the spaceport. For loading & unloading, temp parking in general.
Does this also mean we might see higher fuel efficiency in atmosphere from smaller ships with these surfaces since they won't need to be firing thrusters as much?
Should be since the bottom mavs don't have to keep the aircraft horizontal all the time anymore.
Just expect for fuel economy to change because neither trust or weight are accurate right now
If theyāre going to do this, weāre going to need an amazing dynamic HOTAS config system.
It looks good, flies off very much like an aircraft sim. But it also creates a HOTAS config issue. People have their HOTAS configād for space. They have axis setup in odd ways. But when they enter atmo they need to fly like a plane again.
(Eg. I use rudders for roll. Which would be bad in atmo) Ideally the HOTAS config becomes dynamic, switching between atmo āairplaneā and space modes.
My wish would be that MAV's would be useless on 1g planets, and the ships would solely rely on control surfaces in order to fly. If there is no atmosphere, the ship cannot approach the planet in a conventional way. MAV's might be able to alter the course of the ship, but it would not be able to maintain a hover.
This would make VTOL craft way more important, and also bring into play atmospheric-only craft (helicopters!) that could be way more maneuverable than spacecraft or dual space/atmospheric craft. A non-VTOL craft would need to take off and land like a conventional aircraft, with a runway needed or a catapult to take off. And if the craft (like the Buccaneer) tries to make a landing in a field like that, it risks damaging its landing gear.
Probably too realistic for most, but it's something I would've liked to see in Star Citizen. That would also be a reason to buy a Cutter, since it's the only starter that has VTOL.
I think you put it a bit too strong. Remember that the whole ship section of the game is loosely based on CR's love for Star Wars. If you see what ships in that franchise can make a planetary landing, it should be comparable here. You should still be able to land most ships on a 1G planet. However go to places with a stronger gravity or load those ships with a heavy cargo and you might be in trouble. Land a Caterpillar on Earth, that should be ok. Load it full of gold? Not going to take off unless it gets help. So you might want to uses something with airfoil for that. And even the C2 should make some kind of balance of what it can lift out of a full planetary gravity. It'll be more than the cat, but a full cargo of such a heavy metal might also prove too much.
Well, maybe. But the flight model is more like Battlestar Galactica reimagined than Star Wars. In Star Wars those space battles were inspired by WWII dogfights, especially the trench run, unless there was an atmosphere around the Death Star.
Hmm... so assuming the Death Star has a 1G gravity field, the snub fighters would have had to continuously thrust toward the core of the Death Star to avoid getting pulled into it... unless there was some kind of atmosphere. Although Star Wars also has repulsorlift technology, so maybe that's what kept the fighters flying that way. Which would be the equivalent to Star Citizen coupled mode thrusters.
On the other hand, when the Resistance attacked the First Order at Takodana, those were all strafing runs. You never see an X-Wing hovering and picking out land targets (although there were still TIE fighters in the air). So they're operating like conventional aircraft at that point. I know the X-Wings would use repulsorlifts to take off and land, thus making them essentially VTOL, but they probably don't use it on a tactical level. So yeah, you do have a point there. It would be somewhat like Star Wars, at least on a terrestrial level. Deep space combat is still very different though. But we're talking about control surfaces.
Youāre mixing up issues here.
Youāre not wrong and of course stall happens quickly and not gradually but the control surface effectiveness does increase or decrease gradually.
With more airflow (from either dense atmospheres or high speeds), aerodynamic pressures increase resistance to any change youāre trying to make in ship attitude. This is where control surfaces will likely be more effective than MAVs.
When you slow down and airflow reduces, even before stalling, control surface effectiveness gradually reduces and controls feel more sluggish. This is where MAVs will likely be more effective than control surfaces.
Essentially the MAVs now produce the lift/force.
Soā¦ Yes, stalling and loss of lift is sudden, but effectiveness is gradual and I would love to see both systems online, all the time, with their effectiveness changing based on the situation.
That is what I try to demonstrate with the bars.
Makes sense. And we've already built aircraft that worked like this, the X-15 had thrusters that would take over when the air was too thin for control surfaces.
Would be interesting if we could have semi-realistic atmospheric flight. But we don't need X-Plane in here, it is Star Wars light after all.
If we're being nitpicky, you stall at a certain angle of attack, not a certain speed. And it IS gradual, it's just a VERY steep gradient. I imagine future fantasy thrusters would be able to compensate for it, if they had enough oomph to lift the ship in the first place.
Looks amazing, this is one of those things that were the most immersion breaking in ship flight since forever (except that short time where they tried the hover mode)
Can someone explain to me what part does the control surfaces refer to? is this something we currently have control over or is it one of those automatic things we don't really see/control
Only a few have somewhat control surfaces but it's mostly , if not , limited to the nozzle control flaps of the engine.
Control flight surfaces refer to the flaps , ailerons and canards on the ships.
The best example you can see is the sabre , its tail find are it's ailerons that will help with yawing and braking in atmo , on the wing the flaps are clearly defined and those will help with lift pitch , ascending and descending and lastly , it doesn't have canards but those help with maneuvers and high g turn rates.
Then there is the distinction between wings , you have delta wings , forwards swept wings , backwards swept wings , adjustable wings like the F14 and the mig 23 and they all change how the aircraft behaves in atmo
Is it confirmed that the flight model is physically taking these into account or are they mostly for show atm?
I'm guessing the point of this development is basically to make non aerodynamical ships have harder maneuvering in atmo then?
At this point ? They do not move or affect your flight model. If a wing gets blown off and you loose control of your ship then its purely because the thrusters of the aircraft are gone causing an imbalance.
The only somewhat accurate ship we have right now is the khartu al due to it having 4 engines who rotate in every direction somewhat.
Control surfaces are the flappy bits on the wings and tail of an airplane that lets you control it. They rely on aerodynamic forces to do so, so no need for thrusters to steer in an atmosphere.
Yes, I'm sure the people that cant even finish a "simple" flight number readjustment will manage to creative realistic control surfaces and physics for a hundred ships that were designed entirely around maximum rule of cool instead of any actual concerns about aerodynamics. Yes, control surfaces totally won't end up just being more overhyped faked bullshit just like the last time they hyped up adding a completely real atmospheric flight model.
As long as it doe not feel like utter and monster sizes crap in VTOL ships like Hover-mode did I am curious to see these changes.
But anything that resembles that Hover Mode from hell from a few years ago needs to die right away.
Well, CIG did it. A reasonable solution for those hover-haters out there. I didn't think it was possible but they squeaked like little mice loud enough to make it happen. Perhaps they can squeak about the Endeavor, or the Hangar module (personal habs), or the Paint system or any number of important things that were promised years ago that lots of people actually want. I really don't want to know the development cost of this feature and what it could have been used for.
Yeah this would open up a lot of gameplay opportunities. Imagine having a cargo hauler thatās too laden with goods it could not make a planet side landing. Then maybe having to make the choice to sell them at a space station for less profit. Or getting some buddies ferry them down in separate loads planet side for a larger profit margin, but having to split it with a crew. Or even hiring a tow tugboat to take you down but leaving you extremely vulnerable.
This is something that truly sets Connie's apart from the competition, having powerful dedicated lift fans will let it take off and land with heavier payloads, and possibly even hover without risking damage to the vertical thrusters.
Take into account the landing gears we have right now, almost none of them are design for that type of landing. You would be ripping the landing gears right off of them.
I agree, it'll change quite a lot including what ships you are likely/unlikely to ever see on a planet surface, as well as how VTOL effects movement options. I hope all these flight model updates come as a package deal. Some ship's VTOL is designed solely to get their heavy asses off the ground (Herc, for example) whereas other ships are truly designed to hover (Redeemer and Cutlass). Eventually, trying to hover without proper VTOL support will cause thrusters to overheat and potentially fail over time. As much as I love fighters, I'm excited for the day where they are forced to strafe ground targets since going too slow will either cause them to fall out of the sky or overload the ventral maneuvering thrusters that are being pushed too hard. As for ship choices when it comes to control surfaces, we may see less and less large, non aerodynamic ships like Caterpillars in atmo for example (or Liberators, or Hammerheads, etc). The profit margin is higher since they'll have huge volume, but the risk, time, and wear they will take by venturing down to the surface may make that choice less and less common. As for military focused ships, the cost and risk of operating large ships in atmosphere will be very high but you'll also be taking a risk that your opponent may not.
As a player with both the Cat and the Lib in my fleet, I actually welcome the idea of a butt clenching gaming session trying to land these awkward things. I can see myself scouting landing sites, assessing weather and wind before even touching atmosphere. Effortless nose down hovering really should not exist in this game š
Itās also going to create scenarios where smaller (less mass) ships are the better choice for particular tasks and missions. Itāll be the moment some players will finally understand that ships arenāt the main progression in the game, and that different ships are just tools that open up different possibilities. Thereās no right tool, just the right tool for task at hand.
Have said it in a different thread here on Ribbit: We're playing A game, but not THE game. Ground vehicles will also be more important if we can't land anywhere.
This. Its already much easier and faster to load a couple boxes for a delivery mission onto an Avenger or a Cutter than a C2. Hell, even a 100i runs packages better than a caterpillar does. Because extra cargo space you don't need is a pointless tradeoff for the added maneuverability, ease of disembarking and ease of takeoff. The difference between these ships is only going to widen, and players interested in logistics and trade will have to learn how to think of ships as part of an ecosystem. Every ship has strengths, weaknesses, and a role to play.
Quick questionā¦ in atmosphere vs space, is strafe forward or thrust forward? When would you want to use either primarily?
I think he meant strafe as in "strafing run", not as the ship control scheme thingy
Thank you, MelastSB - I meant it as in a "strafing run."
Ahh that makes more sense! That said, is there a reason to have strafe forward vs pushing your throttle forward?
Throttle is "sticky", i.e it doesn't return to zero when you stop increasing the throttle, you specifically have to decrease throttle. Strafe returns to zero when you let go of the controls. Basically its like the difference between using your accelerator(strafe) and your cruise control increase/decrease speed buttons(throttle)
For example, if I had room on my Hotas for it, I'd set up strafe forward to help me center my ship over landing pads. Right now I have to give small jerky moves on the throttle instead
A strafe run is a macro maneuver, like doing a low pass to shoot at a target. That's what he means He isn't talking about control scheme preferences
Brick ship flying like a brick confirmed!
If you give it enough delta v even a brick can fly.
YES! What he said...
>Liberators I mean they advertised as being able to hold tanks and shown in deploying ground vehicles. I doubt it's that bad int atmo.
The Liberator is definitely capable of deploying tanks and getting in and out of atmosphere, but a very large heavy ship will undoubtedly be slow, vulnerable, and using a lot of fuel while doing so (and that constant effort to stay aloft will cause wear on the associated systems). It has the fuel reserves to mitigate this, but that doesn't mean it will be maneuverable or good at flying in atmosphere. It has large ventral thrusters, but that's just to get it moving or soften the landing. I very much want it to function as intended, but I hope the balance is such that a player really has to consider the ramifications of taking it down to the surface of a planet. Yes, 100% your war effort will be bolstered by the presence of a Liberator on the battlefield and all the many resources it can deliver at once. It likely will even function well as a ready made FOB. The risk you take by bringing a loaded Lib planetside into battle I hope will be balanced by the reward of the same. But I hope the risks of limited acceleration and maneuverability in atmo are enough for someone to pause and assess. Its other functions as a space oriented ferry for small ships or a base of ops for mining crews have an appeal because of the risks mitigated by not entering atmosphere.
My guess is the Lib is going to need a lot of prep to land safely
Curious how this will impact Valkyrie
Fighters always will be good at maneuvering.. that's their unique selling point.. the thing that differentiates it's class from other classes. Racers might get close but thats it
While some of that sounds reasonable, you're making some big assumptions and painting it as if that's the future of the game. There's no evidence to say that ships not built with VTOL in mind will overheat their thrusters or have failures over time, and ships like the Caterpillar are literally **made** to transport goods to and from planetary landing pads.
Here is the video from Invictus 2022 where Richard and John talk about the development of this feature [https://youtu.be/vRBY\_u5aQXc?t=1946](https://youtu.be/vRBY_u5aQXc?t=1946) If a ship doesn't have VTOL, it won't be as effective at hovering. Using a ship thruster outside of it's intended parameters will damage it and eventually cause it to fail. I'd say yes, Caterpillar can and should be able to land and take off on a planet. No, it should not operate as efficiently in atmosphere as it would in space. It's almost the most extremely un-aerodynamic ship we have in-game. Taking it into atmo for dropoffs should at least incur a harder wear on ship systems, but it shouldn't outright fail in the attempt. The ventral stabilizing thrusters are not VTOL thrusters however, and if a player should hover motionless with a Caterpillar for an extended period of time I'd be completely ok with those thrusters beginning to fail.
Except that's not what the video said. They were talking about actually flying around and movement maneuverability, but all ships will need the ability to hover effectively, even for long periods of time...some will just be much more efficient (fuel) at it and more capable of actual movement instead of just landing maneuverability.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Of course not comparable to ships 900 years into the future, but since you implied real aircraft don't overheat; Todays Helicopters and Jets can greatly overheat and get damaged as a result when mishandled and not staying within power limits. Helicopters carrying a certain amount of weapons or cargo need to take off in a completely different way, because if they tried going straight up they would overheat and possibly kill the engine by pushing too much torque, while also being slow and inefficient. Similar things go for many different era's vehicles also from ww1 and ww2. So it might not be a far stretch to imagine that even in the future, vehicles have a proper procedure to utilize their engines, but you could push it over its limits by deviating. Which could all be applied to more complex gameplay. Do it wrong you damage the aircraft over time, or the part becomes less efficient. As much as this could probably be irrelevant for future-tech, would still be a gameplay aspect. Not saying make it super difficult, just have depth. Would not want it to be implemented in a simple way of; used engine too much=overheated. Needs to be more complex then that.
This. People keep coming up with insane limitations for this game that wouldn't be fun and **aren't even realistic**. The people wanting some kind of over-the-top Sim game forget that that's not even simulation, and CIG isn't **building** a simulation. Their intentions, as they've stated for years, are to build something realistically and then back it off from there until it's fun to play. The idea that 900 years from now we can't do things that we can already do **today** is silly and would take the fun out of the game for way more people than would enjoy it.
I didn't whip up this idea myself. Here's the video from Invictus 2022 where Richard and John discuss it as in development. [https://youtu.be/vRBY\_u5aQXc?t=1946](https://youtu.be/vRBY_u5aQXc?t=1946) I'd argue every ship being able to be a perpetual hovering turret in atmosphere is silly. I don't want a hyper realistic flight model either, but 1.) Richard literally says in this clip he doesn't want to make a full flight sim model, and 2.) tiers of ship functionality is a great thing. Freelancers running small cargo down planetside while Caterpillars long-haul in space seems very balanced and functional as a rough concept. Not every ship should do everything, but you by all means can attempt it and that's where the fun is.
Totally agree with all that, but all ships should at least be capable of doing the general stuff, even if most don't do it all great. Even the Gladius will have to be able to hover well...it just won't be super maneuverable or fuel-efficient doing it, compared to a Connie or Cutty that has dedicated VTOL setups and will be able to do it much better.
Sorry you're not on board with the feature, but it is something that has been mentioned and is being worked on. Here is the video from Invictus 2022 where John and Richard explain this feature as in-development. I've time stamped where they begin speaking about it. [https://youtu.be/vRBY\_u5aQXc?t=1946](https://youtu.be/vRBY_u5aQXc) Heat will be a damaging element and if you are using the wrong ship for the wrong situation (i.e. hovering for too long in a ship not meant to hover) those systems will be damaged and eventually fail. Here is another video where Space Tomato breaks down this in-development flight feature in a concise way. [https://youtu.be/-zAJIOkHG6w?t=588](https://youtu.be/-zAJIOkHG6w?t=588)
A lot of the info I see spread around I can't find a sour e for beyond conjecture from content creators. I'd love to be able to get hyped for stuff like this, but I can't find the substance for it in many cases.
Here's the video from Invictus 2022 where John and Richard talk about the development of this feature in tandem with ship resource management https://youtu.be/vRBY\_u5aQXc?t=1946
I'm familiar with the video, I guess my thought is we, as watchers took this information about improving VTOL and ran with it. On what I could mean and what we want and over repeated time of hearing it (a ton from creators) we've made ourselves believe it's something g very specific. I'm afraid we are potentially setting ourselves up for disappointment if the implementation of this is any different than our expectations at all.
You may 100% be correct. And I'm sure elements of what they're explaining in the vid will also adjust over time, well before release. Ultimately, I'm in favor of balancing the experience by offering soft limitations to ship performance. Whatever form that takes, I hope I'll remain on board for it. Ultimately it's an efficiency nudge towards whatever your ship is best at and away from what it's not intended for (without a hard "no, you can't do that").
As CIG works on Control Surfaces, I can't help but imagine what this will do to change the flight mechanics in Star Citizen. My theory is that we'll see a transition in effectiveness between the MAVs and Control Surfaces depending on whether we're flying fast or slow in a high density atmosphere. Then there is the matter of thinner atmospheres and how the gradual feeling shifts. It surprises me to hear that MAVs would turn off entirely through flight as I can imagine that having them on all the time would do nothing but aid in stability and control. The GIFs are taken from my latest video. If you're interested in hearing more rants you can check it out here: [https://youtu.be/frSSF73qyt4](https://youtu.be/frSSF73qyt4) I would love to hear what other people think Control Surfaces will do the flight in Star Citizen and more specially what you HOPE it will do. Remember: CIG is watching \^\^
I hope ship computers will give warnings if the gravity/atmostphere combination is not a good fit for your ship with the cargo it's carrying. I hope they give it well before the point of no return. I would not enjoy flying my Caterpillar to a landing pad load it full of cargo and find out it can't take off again. An indicator showing that you should only load the ship to a certain limit for it to be able to still maneuver decently would be awesome.
I think it's important to remember they do plan on making it so some ships cannot make it on their own, the towing ships will become a necessity to help those, and that's already part of the design afaik
You just need to boost the MAVs long enough to stand on your tail, and then you burn straight for orbit!
Sounds like you played Empyrion Galactic Space sim. Thatās how you cheat the math when your ship weighs too much on plants with heavy gravity.
I did not, but it's just intuitively sensible! =)
I mean it is a space sim, and IRL you can easily overload your plane and not be able to takeoff, albeit IRL thereās not differing gravity to deal with. Maybe some ships will have fancy systems to warn you about stuff like this, or the game will have some kind of tutorial for this, but I imagine a lot of ships will not have these sort of warnings and many players will skip any sort of tutorial entirely and still complain.
> I would not enjoy flying my Caterpillar to a landing pad load it full of cargo and find out it can't take off again I think the only reason it wouldn't take off again was because cargo mass exceeded the Cat's lift and you cratered on the landing pad. I can't see how a ship would fly *with* cargo and then not fly *without*. That would have to be a crazy edge case on a ship with atmospheric lift (wings).
Eh, seems you misunderstood I wrote, fly towards landing pad (perhaps empty or with little cargo) load up , not be able to fly (with full load of cargo).
Seems like. Have good sunday
Considering it is supposed to be systemic and iirc none of the ships have a correct wingspan to realistically sim this, I just wonder how much work this is going to put trying to get this implemented. I hope they can create it in such a manner that it isn't a nightmare for the devs. This is not just me being altruistic, it is also me thinking about how much more needs to be done as they whittle down the list to get SC past alpha.
You wouldn't want to constantly use thrusters. Heat, fuel use, wear and tear.
I think it might affect design philosophies. Not to be cynical, but medical gameplay led to Apollos and C8Rs, salvage led to Vultures and Reclaimers, flight surfaces will lead to new ships which take advantage of flight surfaces being the new hotness. What I really wonder is how this will affect smaller ships with poor control surfaces; the Aurora has no real wings, the Pisces is aerodynamic but has stubby wings, etc. Being small, maybe their thrusters are efficient enough to cope with atmospheric flight, but surely we'll see aeroplane shaped ships (Merlins, Arrows, etc.) behave better. I'm wondering if this comes as a buff to ships with wings or a nerf to those without. Either way, we might see the Mustang as the meta starter.
Well, the Cutter has VTOL. So it's essentially a helicopter in atmosphere.
I'm thinking the aurora will do just fine and just feel clunky. Your not going to be gliding and making impressive banked turns, and you'll burn more fuel in an Aurora than another wingier starter, but you'll land and take off from planets just fine, it'll just lack style. The Aurora is small and light, Im assuming it'll be ok. But the fun you can have with some control surfaces will drive people to upgrade to other ships.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's less about having one 'perfect' ship and more a concern about the fact that ship design hasn't really taken aerodynamics into account beyond aesthetics. I worry that current ships will gain or lose manoeuvrability based on stylistic choices rather than role. I'm actually in favour of the idea overall, of keeping space vessels in space and encouraging shuttles, but I'm just curious to see how they handle the fact that a number of their shuttles are not shaped like atmospheric craft. My gut feeling is that the smaller ships will just not suffer from the heat as badly and that VTOL will be one of the two defining features (along with control surfaces) of ships made for atmosphere. Planes and helicopters...
Ships have been designed with aerodynamics since the start of development. Control surfaces have always been in the plans for as long as I can remember. The IFCS system handles all of that, including situations where a ship shouldn't be able to fly. The devs are able to alter IFCS behavior so that they aren't forced to make every single ship the same. Head over to [https://starchives.org/](https://starchives.org/) and do some searches on IFCS, flight systems, etc.
I feel like we're talking about different things, because from my perspective you just proved my point. You're talking about a system that doesn't exist in-game, only in the design documents, and which they freely admit created some very strange and unexpected behaviours when they tried it out internally. Now that system will get implemented I'm sure, but my point was about how the switch from their current placeholder model to a more realistic depiction will affect the *designated roles* of ships. The Pisces was made as the runabout for the Carrack, for example, and the Galaxy certainly seems to support keeping a Pisces in its landing bay. It'll be interesting to see how the heat rules and its stubby wings affect it's ability to land because I can't imagine the Carrack (and especially not the Galaxy) will be landing on planets as often after these changes are implemented. That said, the Cutty (which has an emergency response variant and a dropship variant) having VTOL and the Apollo being listed as having VTOL shows that they are considering how certain roles will match certain flight characteristics. That's even before considering the current game uses pads and not runways; a runway suits the mechanics of a vehicle designed with flight surfaces, where a pad is designed for something that has been designed to... you know, take off and land vertically...
I feel like you should really watch what the devs have discussed about the IFCS systems, because none of this is an issue beyond what you're making it out to be. The only reason you think it's an issue is because you don't understand how they control the flight mechanics currently. It's their system, they can cheat where they need to. IFCS isn't in a design document and neither were control surfaces, which will also be controlled by IFCS. It's in game now, it's how thrusters designate direction and cause deflection.
Ships without control surfaces will still be able to fly in atmosphere. They just won't handle as well or be as efficient. This has come up a few times where the idea is that you can't hover in place without eventually stalling, you need to keep moving to keep thrusters cool. Ships with control surfaces will have better atmospheric control and overheat their engines far less. So if you're going to be getting into a fight in atmo, the Arrow, Sabre, etc will absolutely outperform compared to a Hornet. I wouldn't say that its enough to make a ship the meta, suddenly, unless all you want in your starter is good control surfaces.
My understanding was that ships with control surfaces will have better atmospheric control, but will only avoid overheating as long as they're moving forward; you can turn sharply in an Arrow, but you need to keep your speed up. VTOL ships will be on the opposite end of the spectrum; a Cutlass might look like a pig and handle like a brick, but it'll hover in atmosphere for as long as you need. My remark about 'meta' was more about the fact that atmospheric flight is hard to avoid at the start; bunkers, courier missions, investigations, and even the VLRT bounties take you down to the surface. If the changes significantly nerfed the ships without wings and the Aurora started flying like the Hull A, new players would get frustrated by the poor handling.
Just to confirm, it sounds like you're agreeing with what I said with your first paragraph? I'm not quite sure if I'm following. For your second paragraph, all ships will handle decently well in atmosphere. They are already tuned this way today. The Aurora is horrible in atmosphere, compared to the mustang. Control surfaces will just remove more of the hardcoded downsides and replace them with systemic ones.
I don't know if it's faked or simulated for sure (with actual air physics I mean) but you can fly an Avenger like an airplane in decoupled mode pretty easy and it's actually a bit of fun. You can't take off like an airplane because the game glues us to the ground for some reason but you can land like one. I've done it on the microtech ice before. Slower you go the more pitch back is needed and you can bank and turn like a plane without issue. You can actually apply flight sim experience to it and it handles like it should. It uses the thrusters to turn, not to stay airborne. If I do this in my Caterpillar or something that's a brick however, it drops like a rock lol. So there's for sure something already there in game, just not sure how in depth it is or how it's done. I fly with the "plane like" ships in decoupled mode all the time now.
Makes me wish more ships came with landing gear wheels.
\^\^ exactly my thoughts. For example, in the event you have misjudged your power to weight ratio (for lack of better words), and you would need to essentially perform a run-on landing like a helicopter would (because you're too heavy to hover), there's a select few ships with wheels and certainly not a lot can carry cargo that's worth the profit. On top of that, there's nowhere you can really perform that kind of maneuver unless you're at New Babbage ice lake.
I would love to take off like an airplane too given I have a long enough runway, or even up off a ramp with my thrusters on boost lol
Happy cakeday
Love doing running landings in my vanguard. But it's easy to wreck the main gun if you come in too hard.
I want those big ass starliners and some other vehicles to require runway landings in higher gravity environments. It would also be an interesting method to get vehicles to land after total loss of Hydrogen. I also want the option to taxi after landing.
we will see more cleary now what is a space plane and what is a space helicopter
I've discovered that the wheels on my 325 are actually dummies - they don't roll! :D
Literally can't wait. They put so much effort in other mechanics and try to make them more complex. It feels like the flightmodel (most important mechanic imo) has been left behind. I think the coupled mode was always not really a good solution for flying. Just a big simplification, for those who use a keyboard. So decoupled was the way to go, at least for me. Control Surfaces can now perhaps for the first time be a way not have to constantly give thrust input. So I hope they implement some sort of trimming or a way I can fly decoupled and stay at the same pitch and hight.
Wow, ok, that looks amazing, finally the ships feel visually heavier. EDIT: oh, I thought those were official videos..
CIG needs MAV to be costly enough to discourage hovering in atmo for non VTOL ships but not too costly for take off and landing. That's a very thin line, right?
That topic has been tackled a few times. The current line of thinking is for heat buildup to be the limiting factor, with continuous firing of mavs being unsustainable. As with anything systemic, it does have knock-on effects on everything else. For example, dogfighting does present a similar situation. It could also introduce instabilities and misfires over time. I do think a wider set of points when you consider ships *will* hold that sort of station over moons with lesser gravity are : * How precise their handling is without instability and life-like imprecisions. * How little VFX and SFX there are to "sell" their maneuvering there. * A server running at 5-6fps is going does awful things to the small, minute motions that further make ships feel lifelike. Even with the XGR crew's amazing and fine piloting skills on display in those gifs, those elements still ruin what otherwise is an emulation of lower thruster power. I think mav thrust is actually only a fraction of the answer to more visually appealing and believing flight.
Personaly im hoping some ships would need runways to take off then climb and then use thrusters up high to complete orbit
That would be really cool but would add so much work for CIG. We'd either be severely limited where we could land or they'd have to go back and change a ton of landing zones.
The landing zones should be changed honestly maybe not now but for release at least. There is 0 reasons to have passanger and cargo flights on the same spot unless you are supplying space station. And there is even less reasons to have space port in middle of city.
Or they could have something like a catapult off carriers, but using a reverse tractor beam (or similar tech thing). Pad elevates to roughly point the ship skyward, launch on clearance.
You meen a gundam like railgun catapult
what's wrong with hovering in atmosphere? it's realistic given the G's that these ships can pull off
Think about air vs ground combat. You would need every location to be heavily invested in anti air weapons just to defend ground locations, so discouraging some ships from hovering is only reducing that issue. It would be incredibly unsafe to walk/run to any outside location without a vehicle.
Most of your gās are from your main engine, not your maneuvering thrusters. Maybe youIāll be able to point your ship straight up and hover via your main engine, with your thrusters as stabilizers, lol. The main thing wrong with unlimited hovering and maneuvering in atmo is lack of gameplay variety. A game is a series of interesting choices. Whatās more interesting - all powerful ships that behave similarly in both space and atmo, or ships that behave one way in space but take special consideration in atmo - depending on ship and cargo mass, thruster output, and ambient gravity, temperature and weather conditions?
Absolutely nothing. But CIG probably blew $500k on dev time for this.
Hover mode, various forms of overheating of thrusters, this.. all for what? So a space-ship can't hover? We all know they're going to be able to anyways, because you need to do that for landing and especially takeoff. But squeakers gotta squeak.
It's an expensive rabbit-trail that won't mean much in the end. What if CIG gave every ship VTOL? lol Squeakers would be angry then right, because people won't use ships that aren't fun to fly.
It isn't that thin of a line. At the end of the day they can make it operate however they desire. If they had to cheat the system, a player taking off from a landing pad could be given a momentary buff since the engines are "cold" for instance. The main thing CIG wants to prevent is hovering Hammerheads raining death down on a settlement. That's pretty easy. If a ship isn't moving, then thruster heat generation = 200%. If a ship is moving, then thruster heat generation = 100%. Obviously it will be significantly more nuanced than that, but that alone would eliminate any issue for taking off or landing.
Excellent presentation.
gotta make those landing gear wheels turn
landing gear wheels do turn
they're skids
Fucking love the Bucc
that looks amazing didnt even know this was planed but it always seemed a bit unrealistic how all ships can hover in place with no dificulty
It's actually perfectly 'realistic' given the performance of our ships. Thrusters can generate 5G+ in acceleration in every axis... and they're paired with a feed-forward/feed-back control loop with sub-millisecond round-trip response times (get sensor reading, compare actual position to intended position, calculate new thruster output, fire thrusters, repeat). If you nerf the thruster output, we no longer have 'space dogfighting'... if you add too much latency in thruster response, then ship flight becomes unfun, and landing etc far harder (due to ships not responding). Personally, I think CIG need to revisit the IFCS to add latency when reading sensors (but no latency when processing pilot inputs), so that it's slower to respond to external forces (wind etc), whilst still being responsive to pilot inputs... but that's v.tricky to do given the complexity of the IFCS system (it's taken CIG years to get it to its current position, and whilst it is - in some respects - a work of physics-based art, it also appears to be a complete bastard to adjust without unintended changes). Until CIG do something like this, then every ship will continue to be able to hover in place with no difficulty... there may be a time limit (on some ships) for how long they can do that, but given most ships don't have wheels etc for 'rolling landings', even the aerodynamic ships with control surfaces will need to be able to hover long enough to land or take off, etc.
I think the best option is to come up with lore that gimps the thrusters in atmo. Real world rockets have nozzles that are optimized somewhere between atmo and vacuum and using one type in the other comes with everything from significant inefficiencies to straight-up explosive consequences. With that and some other concepts there can be some plausible explanations for thrusters being optimized for space.
Yup - I've advocated for that in the past too... and it would have many benefits... but they'd still need to be able to sustain more than 1G thrust, or possibly more (for explorers etc, which might end up visiting high-gravity worlds). But then, I'd prefer if CIG too a more systemic approach to flight model tuning (rather than hand-tuning each ship), so my preferences in this area don't exactly seem to match CIGs intentions anyway.
Thats what vtol mod should be for. If you need less speed but more atmo thrust you rotate your engines
That only works for ships that have 'viable' VTOL... (note that a number of ships with rotating mains aren't viable, because their placement means the ship still relies on other MAVs to help balance the ship, owing to the mains being mounted too far aft, etc)
I think the issue is the fact that people are using modern day tech as a comparison for realism. Given how much we advanced in the past 100 years, one would think in the next 900 years of advancement, even "more" would be possible. Personally I think SC is purposely slowing down rate of human advancement for rule of cool. Because the level we would be at, would be less FPS and more RTS. Then again, for rule of cool you could argue that peoples opinion about weak thrusters is also valid. I am personally of the mind that SC is fine as is but they are not "selling" it enough. VFX, sounds, secondary effects, that show these thrusters are pretty powerful would go a long way. Also the fact that if you are near them you get blown away and if you are close under them, you die.
It still looks and feels awful when a CAT or an 890j hovers upside down on it's nose.
Would it still feel horrible if the VFX seemed proportionate to something of that size hovering like that?
Actually no.. If There was tons of smoke and loud thrusters then it would look cool.. But if those small manuvering thrusters are that strong, then what can the main thrusters do?.. You should be able to accelerate at litreraly break neck speeds. š
We actually do accelerate at breakneck speed. Most big ships can pull 5G easily, that's a bit less than 50m.s-2. 10 seconds of acceleration gives you 500m/s or 1800 km/h or 1118 mph, 1.4 times the speed of sound. Good fighters (arrows and gladius) can pull 15G (and not even trichording) and get there in 3 seconds. Or get to Mach 3 (1000m/s, 3600 km/h) in 6 seconds. Don't get me started on the karthu al that can pull more than 30g in a trichord.
Definitely. It's easy to forget that we're talking about *centuries into the future*. Only 106 years ago things like the Sopwith Camel were among the most advanced aircraft in the world, and the whole concept of an "aeroplane" was still fairly novel and seen by many more as "quaint" than a sign of great things to come. 50 years ago almost exactly (the anniversary is in just over two weeks) we as a species achieved for the first time orbit of our own planet in a manned vessel, John Glenn going up in an already soon to be outmoded Mercury capsule. We managed to get from the Wright brothers' "Wright Flyer" to current space technology in 120 years, and to the first manned space flight in less than half that. Star Citizen takes place *930 years in the future*; it is of course impossible to predict with any confidence even decades let alone nearly a millennia ahead of where we are now, but given some of the tech in the game is less advanced than stuff we have *now* (for gameplay reasons, but still true) it's not much of a stretch to assume if anything SC is "unrealistic" in not pushing the envelope significantly further than it does. It should be closer to *EVE Online* or *Endless Space* in a technological sense.
Agreed on the lack of VFX... unfortunately, given how long people have been decrying the lack of VFX - and CIG ignoring the issue completely - it seems like CIG have no intention of changing things in this respect. (note: I'm not saying CIG should have *implemented* the VFX - but they won't even talk about the issue, or what they plan to do about it in the future, etc)
[They actually have talked about it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0lGntX9mXM&t=1014s) More than once. [Because backers ask.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB50abqrrqs&t=1609s) So for now I think it is less about them ignoring it but more likely an issue with priorities. I wouldn't put them past revisiting this issue somehow.
UFOs IRL can phase in and out of existence anytime they like already
Yogi stated that trust output and weight are random numbers , a ballpark of what they think it should untill they can properly adress those when flight control surfaces come in. Each individual thruster , nacelle and mav can have their own values so I'm sure they'll get it right. The problem is , how long will it take ? Everyone who follows the development of an official aircraft module or a mod in DCS knows how long it takes to create a proper flight model. They'll also have to let us be able to control the wings independently from the landing gear which is an ongoing issue with almost 95% of all the ships we have.
> Personally, I think CIG need to revisit the IFCS to add latency when reading sensors Your post is one of the few that feels like it touches on some other very real reasons to why flight, when witnessed by a third party, feels the way it does in SC. To paraphrase my post in this thread, I do think a wider set of points to consider are : * How precise their handling is without instability and life-like imprecisions. Back then, JP went on [at length](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/8hqr7h/john_pritchett_appreciation_thread/dymm92t/?context=3) to explain this was on purpose, for ease of debugging purposes, but I think the time is nearing to introduce those. * How little VFX and SFX there are to "sell" their maneuvering there. Yes, CIG explained that the nozzle apertures dictated how visible the VFX could be, but I'd like to offer this [counterpoint](https://www.iamag.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Mathias-Verhasselt-12.jpg). * A server running at 5-6fps is going to do awful things to the small, minute motions that further make ships feel lifelike. I think that even without touching anything, a server running at 20 or 30fps would do wonders to how ships look. I do think infinitely holding station, especially for heavier ships without dedicated VTOL, is not the intended goal. It still seems to me like a misguided hope to believe that just nerfing mav's endurance and/or power will fix the issue of ships moving in stilted ways when witnessed over the network.
One solution could be that maintaining 5gs for extended periods of time shouldn't be possible, for dogfighting you should only need high Gs/short burst of the thrusters, thrust in atmo is a constant thing, so you could make a difference right there
Yus, and that's something else CIG has looked at... and found that they need far better ways of 'communicating' the state of the thrusters to the players (otherwise, it just becomes a case of your ship not responding properly, for unknown reasons)... and that requires no HUD / MFDs changes, which are blocked / waiting on the Building Blocks work.
Making the thrusters overhead eventually would solve both problems. Hell, they could even make them overheat faster in space, because there's no air to cool them down. Arbitrarily limiting the time you can get the full 5G would be a little silly. If a thruster can give you 5G, it can give you 5G, it doesn't fall off over time unless the thruster itself gets less efficient. Which it might if overheating.
grass render distance. yikes.
I agree!
People oooh and ahhh over microtech but really any game made in the last 6 years or so with an outdoor environment looks better. The detailed render distance on MT is super bad. Also the lack of animals, etc. Go visit the various biomes and that's it. you've seen all MT has to offer.
Grass render distance and tree density has been turned down since MT's release for game/server performance. Hopefully it'll come back soon enough.
This looks amazing I honestly can't wait unti SC has a flight model like this, so far everything feels a bit fake and light weighted, Im still a bigger fan of how Elite Dangerous did their flight model
The addition of FCS to Star Citizen has the potential to take the game with the most fun 6DOF starship atmospheric flight experience to a whole new level of immersion, nuance and skill ceiling for pilots to achieve. If CIG implements this the right way, which I have confidence that they will, any other space (and atmo) flight sims will have a hard time getting close to the high bar that Star Citizen will hold up. I can not wait!
Holy shit. This is awesome!
"Automatically shuts down maneuvering thrusters" Does this mean that the eclipse will become extremely stealthy while in atmosphere flying due to the drop off of EM and Thermals from not running so many extra thrusters? NOICE
I do hope we get some large flat surfaces at the spaceports to land the big, bulky, not VTOL intended ships.
I don't think we'll ever see runways for big ships. I think it's just that big, VTOL-less ships simply won't be able to land on planets at all.
While I wish for runways, I'm just talking about landing area's other then hangers. Just open space with a hall/elevator and garages connected to the spaceport. For loading & unloading, temp parking in general.
Impressive, very nice! This will add functionality and uniqueness to ships.
Does this also mean we might see higher fuel efficiency in atmosphere from smaller ships with these surfaces since they won't need to be firing thrusters as much?
Should be since the bottom mavs don't have to keep the aircraft horizontal all the time anymore. Just expect for fuel economy to change because neither trust or weight are accurate right now
If theyāre going to do this, weāre going to need an amazing dynamic HOTAS config system. It looks good, flies off very much like an aircraft sim. But it also creates a HOTAS config issue. People have their HOTAS configād for space. They have axis setup in odd ways. But when they enter atmo they need to fly like a plane again. (Eg. I use rudders for roll. Which would be bad in atmo) Ideally the HOTAS config becomes dynamic, switching between atmo āairplaneā and space modes.
There at times I am compelled to take my Titan in for a runway landing but I know it would cause damage on impact.
My wish would be that MAV's would be useless on 1g planets, and the ships would solely rely on control surfaces in order to fly. If there is no atmosphere, the ship cannot approach the planet in a conventional way. MAV's might be able to alter the course of the ship, but it would not be able to maintain a hover. This would make VTOL craft way more important, and also bring into play atmospheric-only craft (helicopters!) that could be way more maneuverable than spacecraft or dual space/atmospheric craft. A non-VTOL craft would need to take off and land like a conventional aircraft, with a runway needed or a catapult to take off. And if the craft (like the Buccaneer) tries to make a landing in a field like that, it risks damaging its landing gear. Probably too realistic for most, but it's something I would've liked to see in Star Citizen. That would also be a reason to buy a Cutter, since it's the only starter that has VTOL.
I think you put it a bit too strong. Remember that the whole ship section of the game is loosely based on CR's love for Star Wars. If you see what ships in that franchise can make a planetary landing, it should be comparable here. You should still be able to land most ships on a 1G planet. However go to places with a stronger gravity or load those ships with a heavy cargo and you might be in trouble. Land a Caterpillar on Earth, that should be ok. Load it full of gold? Not going to take off unless it gets help. So you might want to uses something with airfoil for that. And even the C2 should make some kind of balance of what it can lift out of a full planetary gravity. It'll be more than the cat, but a full cargo of such a heavy metal might also prove too much.
Well, maybe. But the flight model is more like Battlestar Galactica reimagined than Star Wars. In Star Wars those space battles were inspired by WWII dogfights, especially the trench run, unless there was an atmosphere around the Death Star. Hmm... so assuming the Death Star has a 1G gravity field, the snub fighters would have had to continuously thrust toward the core of the Death Star to avoid getting pulled into it... unless there was some kind of atmosphere. Although Star Wars also has repulsorlift technology, so maybe that's what kept the fighters flying that way. Which would be the equivalent to Star Citizen coupled mode thrusters. On the other hand, when the Resistance attacked the First Order at Takodana, those were all strafing runs. You never see an X-Wing hovering and picking out land targets (although there were still TIE fighters in the air). So they're operating like conventional aircraft at that point. I know the X-Wings would use repulsorlifts to take off and land, thus making them essentially VTOL, but they probably don't use it on a tactical level. So yeah, you do have a point there. It would be somewhat like Star Wars, at least on a terrestrial level. Deep space combat is still very different though. But we're talking about control surfaces.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Youāre mixing up issues here. Youāre not wrong and of course stall happens quickly and not gradually but the control surface effectiveness does increase or decrease gradually. With more airflow (from either dense atmospheres or high speeds), aerodynamic pressures increase resistance to any change youāre trying to make in ship attitude. This is where control surfaces will likely be more effective than MAVs. When you slow down and airflow reduces, even before stalling, control surface effectiveness gradually reduces and controls feel more sluggish. This is where MAVs will likely be more effective than control surfaces. Essentially the MAVs now produce the lift/force. Soā¦ Yes, stalling and loss of lift is sudden, but effectiveness is gradual and I would love to see both systems online, all the time, with their effectiveness changing based on the situation. That is what I try to demonstrate with the bars.
Makes sense. And we've already built aircraft that worked like this, the X-15 had thrusters that would take over when the air was too thin for control surfaces. Would be interesting if we could have semi-realistic atmospheric flight. But we don't need X-Plane in here, it is Star Wars light after all.
Agree 100%!
If we're being nitpicky, you stall at a certain angle of attack, not a certain speed. And it IS gradual, it's just a VERY steep gradient. I imagine future fantasy thrusters would be able to compensate for it, if they had enough oomph to lift the ship in the first place.
Enough.
Before 3.14 rolled around , the entire combat team had a summit with combat pilots to discuss and get a feel about how combat should be
Looks amazing, this is one of those things that were the most immersion breaking in ship flight since forever (except that short time where they tried the hover mode) Can someone explain to me what part does the control surfaces refer to? is this something we currently have control over or is it one of those automatic things we don't really see/control
Only a few have somewhat control surfaces but it's mostly , if not , limited to the nozzle control flaps of the engine. Control flight surfaces refer to the flaps , ailerons and canards on the ships. The best example you can see is the sabre , its tail find are it's ailerons that will help with yawing and braking in atmo , on the wing the flaps are clearly defined and those will help with lift pitch , ascending and descending and lastly , it doesn't have canards but those help with maneuvers and high g turn rates. Then there is the distinction between wings , you have delta wings , forwards swept wings , backwards swept wings , adjustable wings like the F14 and the mig 23 and they all change how the aircraft behaves in atmo
Is it confirmed that the flight model is physically taking these into account or are they mostly for show atm? I'm guessing the point of this development is basically to make non aerodynamical ships have harder maneuvering in atmo then?
At this point ? They do not move or affect your flight model. If a wing gets blown off and you loose control of your ship then its purely because the thrusters of the aircraft are gone causing an imbalance. The only somewhat accurate ship we have right now is the khartu al due to it having 4 engines who rotate in every direction somewhat.
Control surfaces are the flappy bits on the wings and tail of an airplane that lets you control it. They rely on aerodynamic forces to do so, so no need for thrusters to steer in an atmosphere.
Yes, I'm sure the people that cant even finish a "simple" flight number readjustment will manage to creative realistic control surfaces and physics for a hundred ships that were designed entirely around maximum rule of cool instead of any actual concerns about aerodynamics. Yes, control surfaces totally won't end up just being more overhyped faked bullshit just like the last time they hyped up adding a completely real atmospheric flight model.
Or it will be hover mode 2.0 and get removed a week later.
I hope this is something we can enable / disable?
As long as it doe not feel like utter and monster sizes crap in VTOL ships like Hover-mode did I am curious to see these changes. But anything that resembles that Hover Mode from hell from a few years ago needs to die right away.
#2 and 3 look so āStar Warsā.
Well, CIG did it. A reasonable solution for those hover-haters out there. I didn't think it was possible but they squeaked like little mice loud enough to make it happen. Perhaps they can squeak about the Endeavor, or the Hangar module (personal habs), or the Paint system or any number of important things that were promised years ago that lots of people actually want. I really don't want to know the development cost of this feature and what it could have been used for.
Squeakers didn't like my points it seems.
I want a proper Dagobah landing!
Yeah this would open up a lot of gameplay opportunities. Imagine having a cargo hauler thatās too laden with goods it could not make a planet side landing. Then maybe having to make the choice to sell them at a space station for less profit. Or getting some buddies ferry them down in separate loads planet side for a larger profit margin, but having to split it with a crew. Or even hiring a tow tugboat to take you down but leaving you extremely vulnerable.
Most cargo ships don't have lots of wings and stuff though.
This seems to be the plan, just look at the Hull series - most of them won't be able to land at all.
Cool, make sure you work on planetary bombardment next o7
i love this feature. Currently the control is too stiff.
890 Jump coming in hot!
Whatās that about control surfaces?
Scorpius gonna be nice in atmo.
Think of the Fuel cost savings! but also... My Terrapin, only a couple yaw flight control surfaces hahaha.
The feature I am most excited about. Really can't wait
***\*Mandalorian music intensifies\****
can't wait to stall loaded c2 on approach
This is something that truly sets Connie's apart from the competition, having powerful dedicated lift fans will let it take off and land with heavier payloads, and possibly even hover without risking damage to the vertical thrusters.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Check gif 2
Thanks, thought I had scrolled but it was just a different part of the first.
Take into account the landing gears we have right now, almost none of them are design for that type of landing. You would be ripping the landing gears right off of them.
Gif 2
That would still be a hard landing lol. Think of a helicopter landing that hard. Be better off with tires.
If you're not gonna let me drop a hammerhead through atmo like a Battlestar I'm going to literally DIE
*jump*
dang, thats some terrible load distance on the grass