Here's what needs to change I. Lateral acceleration needs to be cut to about 10% when we enter HM It's uncontrollably strong now; the smallest "strafe" input sends the ship careening to the side. We can't use the accel limiter for this because at 10% the VTOL thrusters can't hold the ship up against gravity. This is particularly important because generally our controls are set up for good control of pitch and yaw, but not roll. We need to be able to rely on lateral thrusters for side to side movement. II. In coupled mode any "strafe" movement should be canceled as soon as the control is released. This is how it works in every other coupled regime. It's not happening now. III. Air resistance need to control speed as well. I think this is happening now with forward/backward movement I don't think this is happening with lateral movement. IV. Response to tilt needs to be correct A 6 degree tilt should result in about 1 m/s/s acceleration until the speed at which the air resistance is applying the same force in the opposite direction. That's in one g gravity. It's a function of gravity not of the ship's thrust capacity. That speed is much lower than the TVEL you're displaying on the HUD. TVEL is terminal velocity at full thrust. You need to calculate it at the much lower tilt thrust. The formula is SQRT(TVEL^2 * tilt thrust / max(mains)); for a Freelancer on Daymar this is something like 50 m/s. (if Daymar has one g gravity - slower if it has less) Tilt forces should not apply once the ship is on the ground because VTOL thrust should automatically reduce to 0 unless "strafe" up is applied again. Friction between the ground and the landing gear! (Thanks @Gunric) V. We need auto-collective (by "collective" here I mean as in the collective control on a helicopter - diagram below in the thread) In an un-tilted state, the VTOLs thrust adequately to cancel the current gravity already. When tilted, the VTOL thrust should increase so that it continues to cancel gravity. Our "strafe" up control in many cases is not sensitive enough to match the necessary increase in thrust exactly. Most of us are not flying with a helicopter collective controller. VI. The HM or not decision needs to be made on the basis of planetary body, not atmosphere (thanks @Sir-Berticus ) HM should not activate on space station landing pads. This was just horribly confusing when it did - fixed now. Good. HM should activate at low altitude and low speed over any planetary body (including moons). Currently good, except for Delamar. The decision to activate should not be based on atmosphere (which I assume is why it doesn't activate on Delamar) HM should never ever activate over a pad/in a hangar if it was not active outside the pad/hangar. This was the problem with space station pads before. It is now a problem at Levski. HM should not activate at high altitudes. One might legitimately want to slow and control orientation in combat at altitude. The game should cut their lift thrust in this situation rather than enter HM. (thanks @shoei ) Do those things and you might avoid chasing away new players with a game mechanic that's too hard to learn.