I had discord conversations on MM and people baffled by the changes. It is easy, vectors where 0-1200, now they are mostly 0-250. The rest is math. So let me start with outlining the situation and why we are there. Then we can reopen the conversation about speed. Because IMHO, this is not the right direction. The recent decision by game developers to massively reduce the speeds of various ships, cutting them to close to one-sixth of their original values; with the intention behind this change was to reduce the distance of engagement in space combat change some of the engagements and offer improved visuals of ships. Unfortunately, this alteration had significant adverse effects on player experience; let’s go through some of these: Visuals First let’s quickly park the visual aspect, which has simultaneously been affected by a UI overhaul that is very invasive and distracting. And while relative distances are smaller, they are not close enough to really admire the ships. Expos or non-combat encounters are way better suited to have good locks at ships. The argument seems frivolous to reinforce another objective, but not an objective by itself. Combats are not meant to admire ships, but show of their flight performance. Flight performance The history of flight combat has always been to outperform the others on manoeuvrability (F16, Rafale), speed (F15), stealth (F22, F35), versatility (Gripen) and so on. It is a competition for the edge, because at the edge you gain an advantage. Suddenly everything is within a tiny bracket of performance relatively. The C2 Galaxy performance is close to an F16 and so on. The diversity and dynamics have been reduced to rounding errors and as flight has been obliterated, the entire dynamic becomes amount of damage inflicted versus received. Evasion Tactics Compromised One of the most immediate and noticeable effects of the speed reduction is on evasion tactics. In the original game mechanics, faster ships could evade incoming fire by manoeuvring swiftly, making it challenging for opponents to maintain a lock-on target. With reduced speeds, evasion became significantly less effective. Ships now moved sluggishly, making it easier for enemies to predict. The relative speed of ships having been reduced the opportunity to lure ships away from their colleagues and stretch the pack is also gone. The ships stay in clusters because of the speed nerf, not because of a tactic. For PvE, this makes encounters more difficult, but it is a simplistic approach to patch the AI. With vector and thrust direction freedom, but relatively small vectors and a lot of inertia. Combined with small relative vector deltas, you indeed get closer to each other. But you also help ensure the relative position is constant. Most of the time, unless there is a third-party pressure, that means face-to-face; cf next point. Target Acquisition and Retention A critical impact was on the ease of keeping targets in front of the ship. With the drastic reduction in speed, the pitch and yaw values (the angular adjustments needed to aim) was not as dramatically affected. This means that players can more easily maintain their aim on a target, reducing the skill required to engage in dogfights. The result is a more static and less dynamic combat experience, where strategic manoeuvring plays a diminished role. Adding the opportunity to back strafe makes it even easier to keep target in attack cone. And as both the attacker and defender are incentivised to be on the offense. The new game is basically who can burn through the shield fastest. Dodging being a nice to have, but shield capacity being way more important. The other impact is that the best weapon becomes whatever burns through the shield fastest and then disables ship effectively. Right now the canons really are the ideal for that. Sub-component targeting With ships combats having become a face-to-face slap fest with large shields and canons. Except for targeting very large non-manoeuvrable non-combat ships like Reclaimers or Hull-Cs, I am not sure I get the point. Against small ships that has no use, but even against a Connie, Corsair, Hercules or 600i which were all way too good as single seater fighters. These ships have remained manoeuvrable enough to keep most players in the front and have huge shields that absorb a lot. How will sub-component targeting change that? Will it not simply help ensure that large ships get more dominant? Furthermore, the whole objective of sub-component targeting would be to use manoeuvres to hit a weak spot. Does Master Modes not defeat that whole concept? In a world where you stay face-to-face with most ships how do you hit anything else than the face? BTW, why would manufacturers not simply create huge front shields? Why would manufacturers have their components anywhere else than the back ? Conclusion The speed reduction has disrupted the balance between different classes of ships. Faster, more agile ships were designed to rely on their speed for both offense and defense. Slower ships typically had heavier armor or stronger firepower to compensate. By reducing the speed of all ships equally, the nuanced balance between different ship types was undermined. Agile ships lost their primary advantage, making them less viable in combat compared to their slower, more heavily armed counterparts. As a result, the F8 is sort of the king of combat now and the Connie, Corsair, 600i and Hercules as single seater are still viable. Snubs are not usable anymore, light and even medium fighters have been made low threats or irrelevant. Stealth gameplay is questionable if still present. Industrial ships are at risk of being ambushed guard down and should simply flee whenever something suspicious happens. I cannot see how this is better on any level gameplay wise. Furthermore, one of the joys of space sims is the exhilarating sense of speed and the thrill of high-velocity chases. By cutting ship speeds so drastically, the game lost much of this excitement. Where from here in 1st REPLY below due to post limitations