So this has been a big issue for a long time. The core suggestion in this thread is not new, it is in fact something that CIG have previously implemented. This thread is mainly to clarify the issue and collect community feedback on what (I think) is a simple, proven and obvious fix. How should gimbals be reworked? Please return to to the gunnery system from the very early days of AC, where every weapon used a "gimbal" to align the point of impact with the centre crosshair. This would completely remove aim-to-fly controls, ship-mountable gimbal objects and the N-1 system from the game. All controllers flying all ships with all setups would fly-to-aim, rather than aim-to-fly. Why does this need to change? Here are the serious problems I see with the current system: 1. Gimbals are a big advantage. The core issue with aim-to-fly and gimbals is that, because the IFCS does all of the hard work, your aiming speed is effectively your ship rotation rate plus your gimbal traversal rate. This combined aiming speed is so high and the input for it is so simple that a turning or strafing opponent is still very easy to hit. This very high speed aiming felt about right in ~1.3, when ship speeds were higher, but as ship speeds increase the fixed guns fall further and further behind for accuracy. 2. Gimbals are only for certain devices. I'm not entirely sure how gimbals work on a controller, but there is certainly no practical way to use them with a stick. 3. Gimbals are only for certain ships. Despite gimbals offering a fairly huge accuracy advantage, they are not available or not viable on all ships. They come as standard on hardly any ships. The current N-1 system applies a much bigger penalty to DPS at the lower end of the weapon scale, and does not work at all for Size 1 guns, which unfairly punishes the starter (and similar) ships. 4. The aim-to-fly experience is boring. There are several threads out there going into detail about the nuances of the flight model, and how a number of things are completely circumvented by aim-to-fly controls. For me, the issue is that fights between ships with gimballed guns are just DPS contests. So in effect we have a very strong, very exclusive game mechanic which actually weakens the most important aspect of the game (flight). So this is just another Mouse vs HOTAS thread? Not at all. Gimbals and aim-to-fly are very problematic for controller balance, but the main point of this thread is the huge negative impact they have on ship and ship weapon balance. What are the advantages? This very simple change would be the single biggest step towards controller parity. Controllers would retain their unique styles, but everybody would be on a level playing field. The main reason for this change is that it would remove all of the major obstacles to actual ship balance. Although ship balance is not super important this early in the project, I do not see a way that the current system can actually be balanced. With this change, ship weapons could be balanced fairly against each other, without designers having to worry about specific weapons being broken on specific ships. Once weapons are balanced then ship weapon hardpoints can be balanced properly, as every ship will be capable of dealing the full DPS from every hardpoint. Would this make the game less accessible to new players? Perhaps, but only if they are flying a ship like the (Super) Hornet that is fully gimballed out of the box. For everyone else, whose ships probably came with an insane mix of fixed and gimballed weapons, having only fixed weapons with unified points of impact would make a lot more sense. Would there be auto-aim? Not necessarily. I personally would prefer not to have auto-aim in the game, but this suggestion is completely agnostic to auto-aim. If it were to be implemented then it would, with this change, help all input devices and all ships equally. Would this give an advantage to stick users? No. As a mouse user myself I would hate to see an expensive peripheral become necessary to enjoy SC. Interactive Mode (without gimbals) for the mouse would stay, giving natural and accurate control without all of the current problems. Different controllers will be better at different things and it will come down to preference. Right now pilots with different controllers are playing different games. What about larger ships? How will they hit fighters? I think that it should be difficult to hit fighters with the main guns of big-ish ships: after all one good salvo is game over for the fighter. With missiles and the promised improvements to manned turrets I think that larger ships will be more than covered. If they still need some accuracy up front then the co-pilot could control the weapons as if they were gimballed. Because aim and flight would not be on the same input, or even on the same person, there would be none of the issues seen currently. Why automatically align at the point of impact? Relying solely on projectile speed to match points of impact is arbitrary and unrealistic, and it unfairly punishes the ships with the more eclectic weapons hardpoints. Matching points of impact would allow players to use different styles of weapon together, instead of picking whatever boring weapons happen to match after consulting an external (and very helpful) spreadsheet. Even if gimbals and the controls stay exactly as they are, this alone would alleviate a lot of the issues that fixed guns face.