While the new buildings are nice, JT has grown pretty stagnant. The current state of balance and flight model is the largest contributor to this. The lifecycle of JT follows a very predictable path, that almost never deviates. It starts with a few cargo ships trying to get some boxes and fragile truces starting. The Comm Array is still up, no one wants a CS, so the conga line starts. Some group or org tries to "regulate" JT and become the protectorate. They roll in some large hardware to "secure the airspace." This is most commonly a crewed Redeemer. There are occasional A2 bombs that the groups fail to stop, sometimes some on foot people cause trouble but due to this being a relatively fresh patch with a recent wipe -snipers and railguns are not too much of an issue because people have not yet amassed large numbers of this equipment. Then the BS starts. Some mid to high skill pilot goes and brings a meta light, usually a gladius or arrow. This single person kills almost every single person there at JT. Larger ships, like Hammerheads and Redeemers are just not effective against the lights and are forced to retreat. The server aces in lights dominate JT and kill everything coming in, including ground vehicles. JT can just be perpetually held with 2-3 gladiuses. Everyone goes and gets their light fighters, and the entire thing just boils into atmo arena commander for the whole event. Any possibility of combined arms gameplay is completely destroyed. At this point I'm already asleep and playing something else, because if I wanted to just have light fighter duels I can go to arena commander. This is every single JT. Simple root causes: LFs are brutally effective against every single vehicle, assuming decent piloting skill. Only another light can kill a light. Large ships and turrets (while turrets are not bad) are not effective against light fighters due to the light's ability to just disengage or outrange larger ships. This is namely hammerheads and redeemers. Lights can still effectively ignore larger gunships as a minor environmental hazard and continue to effectively kill other ships that are supposed to be protected by them. This might be ok for Redeemers (the larger S5 turrets shouldn't be able to touch lights) but HH's should shred lights. Outside of lights vs. lights, the only thing effective against lights are crewed Hurricanes. After the board is cleared, lights can just harrier above ground vehicles and on foot people and kill them. This is pretty stupid and something hovermode set out to solve, but never was implemented in a manner where it was effective at this goal. The next flight model (mastermodes) really needs to focus on certain things: Anti-Fighter Turrets (sub S5) need to be extremely effective and shred lights. If you are a light and approach a turreted ship on an unsafe vector where even a moderately skilled gunner has pip on you, you should get absolutely trashed. The presence of hammerheads should be so strong of a fighter deterrent that they need to bring other kinds of ships to stop it. PLANNED BY CIG WITH MASTER MODES, FORCED LOWER SPEEDS WILL FIX THIS. The survival power difference between heavies, lights, and mediums needs to be much more extreme. Lights need to be LIGHT, as in pretty much Japanese Zero tinfoil armor levels of survival power. They already have significant sustain in maneuverability and should feel heavy hits in a devastating way. Heavies should have a level of turret tanking capability and fire trade options. Bottom line being that some mediums and heavies can survive long enough in small arms turret fire to deal threatening damage to larger ships, lights don't have this option at all. PLANNED BY CIG WITH ARMOR REFACTOR. Harrier mode needs to die. In that if you are a light fighter and not a dedicated gunship/drop ship with VTOL, you have no maneuverability options for ground attack. Light fighters should drop out of the sky at low velocity and be forced to use VTOL when near the ground, with the only purpose of VTOL being LANDING. While in VTOL, lights should be pretty much sitting ducks with absolutely terrible movement when compared to dedicated VTOL gun/dropships. PLANNED BY CIG IN NEW FLIGHT MODEL. Dropships need extreme survival buffs. In that even multiple light fighters would have a problem stopping a dropship from bringing troops and bigger hardpoints + more firepower from heavies or mediums would be needed to kill it. 5x-10x survival power to drop ships from where they are not would not even be that extreme in my opinion. These things should be armored AF, super hard to kill, and require heavy guns and specialized hardware (e.g. mid-large torpedoes, ballistas, centurions) to deter. This would lead to better types of Jumptown events where there is more combined arms because light fighters would suck at killing drop ships and be unable to stop them without support. (NOT TALKED ABOUT BY CIG, NEEDS TO BE PLANNED) I would also recommend the amount of flares lights carry to be significantly reduced to make missile boats more effective as fighter screen options (hammerhead can't be the only option). The crew cost of the HH is very high, it survival power needs to match. It needs to be able to tank at least 4-6 torpedoes before going down, instead of one eclipse torpedo immediately ending the gameplay session of 7 people. This is the main reason people don't staff HHs. Ramming large ships should not be as effective as a tactic as it is now. While it should still do damage, most mega large multcrew ships should be able to survive multiple significant rams from smaller ships. The point of this is to ensure that we have multiple types of ships contributing to the battle, vs. just everyone bringing light mary sue fighters that can do everything. Right now it only takes ONE gladiusbro to completely ruin JT and decompose it into Arena Commander.