“Dogfight in star citizen is a condition, where two ships move erratically in the opposite sides of a non stationary imaginary sphere, while both looking in the center of it and shooting at each other until one of the ships is blown up” Well it's true, isn't it? No chasing each other, no trying to get each other's tail, no brilliant dogfight techniques…no tactical gameplay whatsoever. A true point and shoot arcade. In the end of the day, it all comes down to: dps, ship hp, good control device (aka dual sticks - only) and from there, some skill, muscle memory and a bit of luck... My point is: The current flight model needs to be revised from its core. I will try to summarize this into segments. I did a lot of work trying to write this post, it’s a rather big one, so please bare with me... 1)Strafe speeds. Ships have main and maneuvering thrusters. Let's summarize that: Main thrusters are big, while maneuvering thrusters are many and small. Main thrusters are for top forward speed, while maneuvering thrusters are for maneuverability. Well it seems that maneuvering thrusters can accelerate your ship to top afterburner speed! Try it. Turn on decoupled mode, press afterburner and strafe let's say up, or right, or even backwards…you will end up with your top forward afterburner speed (you can turn your ship to direction indicator and then you can see your ship’s actual speed) First of all it doesn't makes sense at all. Second, I believe it ruins the whole concept of maneuvering. Cause, why try to maneuver, when you can just fly at that direction and shoot? Keep in mind that accelerating with maneuvering thrusters in any direction, currently doesn’t affect roll, pitch or yaw rates, which it should, considering that maneuvering thrusters are also responsible for that rolling, pitching and yawing movement as well. Plus people offer complain about difficult manual landings…well it's because with keyboard, pressing Ctrl (strafe down) is equal to momentarily accelerating to full SCM speed strafing downwards. That’s why! 2)Acceleration and deceleration rates. Every ship accelerates and decelerates in every direction, in a ridiculous rate. I have so much fun watching ships coming for landing at port olisar at full SCM speed and when they press N…they decelerate below 50 like they just hit a wall or something! It looks so unnatural. Currently reducing to PRE mode doesn’t slow you down to 50. It slows you down to a true percentage of 50 from your previous SCM speed. If you have 50% of your ships top SCM speed and hit N, you will abruptly slowdown to 50% PRE speed, aka 25. Fell free to try it. Anyways, apart from that, those high acceleration/ deceleration rates have a ripple effect in various aspects of the gameplay.(formation flight, aiming, atmospheric flight etc) 3)Drift. Self explanatory. Why all this drift? Why should the ships turn, accelerate and be able to strafe so much? Why the need for this “boost” to keep the ship in track? There is no need for such complexity in an already complex control method. 4)G forces. Trust me on this. As a real life helicopter pilot and as a former jet aircraft pilot with more than 1000 flight hours , that is not how G forces work! I have experienced G forces from -1,5 to +7Gs and trust me when I say, you get really exhausted! And no, you can not counter negative G forces with positive ones and vise versa to avoid passing out! First of all, the human tolerance is from -2Gs to a max +9Gs, while side Gs human tolerance is somewhere in between, so you can’t push down the stick the same as pulling up! The game animation for G loss of consciousness is pretty much correct (apart from the grey out stage that is missing). So all players, including myself, do not respect that a “pull up” turn must be used at all times in order to get the highest rate of turn, without passing out, but instead players are constantly abusing a brocken flight model by turning in whatever direction and roll to counter Positive G's with negative ones and vise versa. Turns should always be a combination of roll and pulling up! I know that I am talking about a radical change in the gameplay but, if we do not change that, we gonna have to admire all those spaceships turning like cars in highway, while in atmospheric flight...Plus,I feel that all this effort in the more realistic fps aspect of the game (stamina system) doesn’t line up with the arcade-ish flight model. If you get tired by running and it affects your aim, a similar effect must be present in flight model as well. For obvious reasons. 5)Control Complexity. Ok, first of all I like all the flight modes and stuff and I have so much fun playing around and experimenting with them…But isn’t it supposed to be an every-controller-friendly-game? Wasn't Star Citizen supposed to be playable with both mouse/keyboard, joystick and console controllers? Well it can't. Simply because joystick users use their wrists along with their fingers and therefore a mouse/keyboard user runs out of fingers for the same controls! And the controller user runs both out out of fingers and keys! Let's face it. Majority of players uses mouse/keyboard. That should be the base for the game development! In a typical dogfight or race you have to use in your left hand: W,A,S,D, spacebar, Ctrl, shift, X, G, C some times V, numpad for shields. How do devs expect a keyboard user to keep up with a joystick one? Like the the lack of proportional control in half of the controls wasn't difficult enough, non joystick users run out of keys. I do believe that some controls can be completely eliminated. Boost for example. No need for a player to constantly hitting this damn X button and Shift every freakin second. It is easy to learn, but so unnecessary waste of a finger in the non joystick users. I often see players spending a ridiculous amount of money in dual joysticks, track ir, voice attack and other products, all in an effort to gain as much control as possible over an already complicated gameplay. I do feel sad for the added complexity that leads to a one-way solution of buying all this equipment and I honestly think that dogfight and racing can be easily tailored to fewer key bindings without any significant impact in the flight experience. 6)Ridiculously fast movement. All the above eventually leads to fast accelerating, high drifting, no specific orientation with no respect to human tolerance, movement of spaceships. Anyone can make their avenger titan go from 705 boost to an abrupt stop, then 705 strafe down while rotating and then reverse and strafe left also at 705 strafe right while shooting. If the pilot is about to pass out, he will roll a bit to counter the G forces. No fatigue or airframe stress whatsoever. So as the whole dogfight or race gets faster and faster...this game shifts from being a simulator into being an arcade-ish game. 7)Impossible to hit targets...well...Obviously! CIG tried so hard to make the game, “fast”, “cool” and “close and personal” but now we can't really hit anything anymore! What was the old solution from CIG? E.s.p! Well e.s.p. is actually a freakin aim-bot! Seriously... Why make the whole thing to fast to actually hit something and then introduce a short-of-aim-bot to solve it? And frankly, that is why turrets can't hit anything! How can you hit something in a turret, while your ship and the enemy’s move so erratically in every direction? I was both sad and amused when I saw that ATV about turrets. Please CIG it is not the turrets the issue. It's the ridiculously fast accelerating and maneuvering ships that messes up with the aiming. If I were you I would seriously try to slow down every movement, not increase even more the movement of turrets. And of course I would ditch the e.s.p. and all its after hitting target annoying effects. Can’t you see the big picture here? 8)Aiming pips. It’s broken. Probably it’s a bug and I am sure it will be fixed. I also think that along with that fix, a way of highlighting the target “shape” in higher distances must also be implemented. Having an accurate pip along with a way to accurately see the enemy ship shape, will allow for higher distance successful shots. 9)Item 2.0. I do like that concept, I love it actually! But since a typical dogfight in arena commander lasts 3-5 seconds (if a player is good enough), I wonder, who will spend even a single second in trying to play with the cockpit gizmos...I do agree, that we all need the cockpit immersion that the item 2.0 can provide, but it the current high pace, low distance, close and personal gameplay, I really don’t see how practical, looking away from the fight and trying to act on the MFDs really is. No one won’t act on shields, power distribution, missle selection or whatever, cause they are going to loose precious time and probably die. Everyone will just point their ship and shoot in whatever setting their ship currently has. 10)Atmospheric flight. Although I have no data on that. Judging from what I saw in gamescom demo, the whole atmospheric flight is not good enough! Plain and simple. CIG must spend a serious amount of time in researching how aerodynamic forces work in real life and then implement those rules in game. That means: No mid-air hovering in gravity without ridiculous fuel consumption, no yaw turning (like a car in highway) in atmosphere, no just a few turbulence to simulate atmosphere and so many others. From what I saw in gamescom, atmospheric flight needs a lot of work. (continued)