Ever since the 3.0 flight model, Star Citizen has lived in a constant state of light fighter supremacy. PvE, PvP — doesn’t matter. The ship with the highest agility, smallest profile, and just enough firepower always wins. :scorpion: The Stinger Problem The Vanduul Stinger is just the latest casualty in a long line of slow, heavy ships that don’t stand a chance in practical combat. Right now, everything between an Anvil Arrow and an RSI Polaris might as well not exist in combat. If you’re not flying an agility ship, your only other option is to jump into a tanky capital ship bristling with PDCs. Even then, your Polaris or Idris can’t kill light fighters — those ships are just annoying defensive enough to make light fighters bored and fly away. That’s not balance; that’s avoidance. :money_with_wings: The Progression Trap Here’s the real issue: progression feels backward. The best combat flight experience in the game happens the moment you hop into an Arrow or Gladius, everything beyond that is a nose dive into a spiral of pain and misery. You can grind for weeks to afford something “better” like a Stinger — and the reward is a ship that feels worse to fly and performs worse in combat - both in PvE and PvP. Remember those LRT bounties that are zippy auroras that were so easy to kill on a gladius? Now fighting those on your new Stinger feels 10x as hard. How in the hell is ship progression going to work in a model like this? Wasn't the point of the vehicle experience team to ensure that the ships feel good to fly? Fighting in an Arrow feels godlike. Fighting in a Stinger feels like dragging a brick through space -or being a helpless space cow that dies to the cheapest and lightest ships that you get at the start of the game with no chance to fight back. Heavy fighters don’t make the game more challenging in a fun way — they just make it less enjoyable. All of the things that were so easy to kill become exponentially harder. All of the shots that were easy to avoid and situations that you could escape at will become mortal death traps once you leave a ship like an Arrow and step into a ship like the Stinger. :gear: “Maelstrom Will Fix It!” — No, It Won’t People keep saying the new damage model and Maelstrom will fix balance. It won’t. You can’t patch a flight model problem with a damage model. When one ship can’t hit another, it doesn’t matter how fancy the damage math is. If Maelstrom just makes certain guns ineffective, everyone will swap to the fastest, smallest ship that can still do damage — like a Talon with dual S4s. The meta won’t evolve. It’ll just shrink further. :dart: The Flat Battlefield Right now, Star Citizen feels like a game with 70 guns… …but the map is a flat open field where the only useful one is a sniper rifle. Agility ships are that sniper rifle — the only tool that works. If you put all ship stats on a scale, agility and profile size are worth 1000% more than anything else. That is fundamentally broken design. :mantelpiece_clock: Eight Years, Still Experimenting The Master Modes update didn’t solve this. Because of the flight model, both PvP AND PvE are not fun. Droves of Ace Pilots have already lost faith in the flight model and left the game, permanently. And if Squadron 42 ships with this same model… yikes. This started with 3.0 back in 2017. Eight years later, we’re still “testing” flight models in closed groups instead of actually having one that works. For a game about flying ships — where flying is supposed to feel amazing — it’s wild that we still don’t have a system where something like the Stinger feels good to fly.