Allow me to cart in the evidence: In this video (#1) (time is accelerated x3), I nose dive onto a landing pad at Wala then stop in mid-air get out of the chair drink a coffee get back into the chair yaw the ship 90 degrees left and right then back and do a roll with the nose of the ship pointing down That is not flying. Anyone making an argument that flight is right now a balanced medium between hardcore and casual, this video is my counter-argument. Next video (#2) During this entire flight I am not touching the stick controls No pitch or yaw or roll input. All I do is turn off cruise control at 21km altitude. The ship comes to a standstill at 15km. Because I hate tractor beams I ridicule the feature by tractorbeaming a weapon out of the side window (while the ship remains suspended in mid-air) That means all I have to do is press one button within a 6 kilometer altitude margin and the ship will stop. I can tab out and watch funny dog agility videos while that is happening. That turns the entirety of an atmospheric flight into a one button click affair. A player can come barreling down at full speed and then press C within 6km above ground. The ship would then come to a standstill and turns into a freefloating camera that can scoot in any orientation and any direction. This is not flying. This not a balance between casual and hardcore flight. This is at the very edge of casual so far deep that there would be little more one could do to make it easier. Because how do you make flight easier when even gravity is an option you can toggle? Atmospheric flight should be an area of constant danger that would require the attention of the pilot. The only safe places should be landed on the ground or in space. However that it is now, is literally „use mouse to point nose where you want, and press C when you want to stop.“ One click and the danger stops. I don't want to just complain, I would also like to suggest some ideas on how to „box in“ a realistic flight model. The start would be simply: Make all things get realistically attracted towards the gravity well, ships, objects, anything. And then remove coupled mode. Remove it, and then let players work out how to land safely. And then add helper systems aroudn the edges to assist. However in a way where the flight experience is still there. (post pictures of uatopilot modes) I have posted some ideas on these helper modes earlier this year. However back then the answer by many players was that "capacitors will fix it". Coupled vs Gears-out (where everyone says gears-out is not coupled) Please observe: The video starts with freefall, then coupled is switched on and the ship comes to a standstill. Then I turn off coupled and the ship continues to freefall. Then I switch on gears-out, which triggers a similar coupled mode. I know there have been many arguments on how this is not coupled. However it has the same effect, gravity is removed. So I would call it „driftier coupled“. That should be a side-issue on what we call each mode. Would you agree with my statement that they both turn off gravity? In both cases the game appears to switch into a hacky zero-g mode where the thrusters pretend to keep the ship from falling. However it appears to be all for show. The game keeps the ship at a standstill and then it tells the ship model to backwards calculate the thrusters to keep working, and only if they are turned off or fail, the ship drifts out of zero g To verify what I just wrote, pay attention to ships when they start moving. Can be in space from a standstill or after turning off coupled in atmosphere. The ship will instantly start moving before the thruster vfx animation even has time to pretend it is building up thrust. This is very visible when you watch the thrusters on a Starlifter when press W in space. The ship instantly moves, while the thrusters take some time to show that they are visibly increasing thrust. What should happen is the ship's thrusters working hard to build up thrust before the ship eventually moves as a result of it. That gears-out mode was added, supposedly as a quick fix to players having issues with a sudden 1g pull when on landing pads in space. That was in 3.11, 12 months ago. There is no way to turn it off, for a full decoupled landing experience the pilot has to land on the ship's belly with the gears in. And the quickness of the application of that fix (which I think was within a day or so from a player suggestion) suggests that it was a hack thing added by turning off gravity as a force, as it is in coupled. Currently the flight model does not put any difficulty into flying. You only have to know when to press C. Any point of terrain on any Planet or moon, can be approached in total safety with no skill required. All it takes is scooting the ship like a freelook camera where you want it. It can be a mountain peak, or a ridge, or a field of rocks, there is no difficulty in flight, no gameplay, no depth. No player out there is thinking „gee I wonder if I am experienced enough to land in the icy cold atmosphere of calliope.“ Landing on calliope or aberdeen or Hurston is the same thing. The only difference is the color of the fog and the terrain. and when to press C because the air resistance of the atmosphere causes some different delays before a standstill. The flight model does not offer challenges or excitement. Or the sense of achievement when picking a landing spot and landing. If flight was improved, then it would not just be the chore you do between getting to gameplay locations. It would be gameplay. Flight is the most critical gameplay system in SC. What is the point of all these beautiful environments when it is just the background for a freelook camera? So let me get back to boxing in the flight model. Let's do that by determining what the ship should not be able to do: It should not be able to point its nose up and take off like this. So all ships should have barely enough thrust for slow climbing forward flight, except for some VTOL ships. It should not be able to remain still in the air unless it is horizontal. Any small deviation from horizontal should result in falling. The flight model was going in the right direction. Observe the video below. This was in 3.10, shortly before they added (forced) the drifty coupled mode onto ships when the gear was out. Observe how the ship gets very quickly pulled back to the ground. It felt realistic and fun. Flying was done by using strafe up and banking and pitching the ship attitude with the mouse. It felt like helicopter hover flight. There was a small issue, which was the "flappy bird" gameplay of having to repeatedly press space to keep strafing up a bit, which led to the flappy flying. However that could be fixed with the modes I proposed above. (To be more specific, the 3rd picture). So here is an idea, if this feels too risky: Take one ship in the game, a small one, or one that is old and not many play anyway. Then remove coupled from it (and that other mode I am not supposed to call coupled), and implement some more realistic flying physics for it. I think it will be a very fun ship to fly, because of the gameplay depth added by physics.