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Quick note: The 'Retaliator' you have listed at 3:48 actually pictures a Vanguard. And the actual Retaliator bomber has both control surfaces and VTOL.
I can only think of when I had to land a Black Hawk, loaded down with troops and armor plating, on a high altitude, low air density LZ in Afghanistan, where we knew we wouldn’t have the power to hover below certain speeds and thus had to perform what’s called a “roll on landing” to avoid exceeding power limitations. Hearing you discuss the transition between control surfaces and thrusters is very interesting and I too hope it isn’t left as binary as it is now. I also would love to see more challenging flight models introduced, as it would bring a unique demand for more skilled pilots into certain roles - although the general player might hate that idea. Nice video!
Roll on landings and take offs would be so much nicer for heavy wing styled ships. while vtoll ships should fly more like heli's for take offs and landings :) also more forward flight speed needed before reaching vertical take off to break atmos would be much more cooler in my opinion
the game is perfect to have challenging flight models. could have a whole line of ships dedicated to the pro pilot and when we get new star systems that alone will make flight way more interesting
Great vid. For big ships they definitely will struggle, and many will simply not be able to enter some planetary atmospheres. One example is the HULL-C when in its expanded config with cargo. CIG said you wont be able to take that to planets, zero-g only.
Was in a discussion on reddit where it was insisted that the "C" would be landable WITH cargo. In thinking this would be a one way thing and soft death would be the "better" landing, one you could walk away from 😅
Wow I'm so glad someone is finally talking about this! I've been complaining about the fact that all of the ships in Star Citizen seem to have anti-gravity technology for a very long time.
To be fair, retro thrusters would be pretty strong, so hovering nose down is actually realistic. Same goes for hovering nose up. It's actually weird to see ships hover in their normal orientation if they don't have VTOL thrusters. That said, realism is good, but making the game fun/playable is most important.
@Anaklysmos you'll never eliminate ships pestering you on the ground, especially since VTOL capable ships will be part of the final game. Balancing ground-to-air combat requires more nuiance than just removing the ability of some ships to hover. This presents more problems than solutions anyway... As stated in the video, Star Citizen isn't going to implement runways for landing and takeoff so hovering is here to stay.
@@notmyrealname2.0 Agreed, and inability to hover doesn't make an aircraft not a threat to someone on the ground. The A-10 cannot hover but that BRRRRRRT will end you just the same. And as for VTOLs, Apache, Hind, and Hokum just to name a few. Then you have grenade dropping drones and "loitering munitions".
I think it would be cool if the thrusters didn't turn off when control surfaces took over, and instead helped with manuvering the ship along with the surfaces. I think the thrusters would have to stay a little stronger for that but I personally don't see an issue with them staying at their current power.
I hope you are right, it's exactly what I want too! Will be interesting to see how they handle making thrusters weaker in atmosphere, I think a thrust reduction in atmosphere combined with an overheat mechanic is the way to go. I hope we end up with some actual runways on planets too, I think coasting in from space and landing on a runway without any thrust input would be good fun!
YES! I have wished for this for so so so long. I hope CIG also implements ways to limit the length of time a player can use maneuvering thrusters to hover in place in atmo, Maybe something like the boost meter to temporarily increase power of the maneuvering thrusters enough to allow the ship to fulfill its VTOL capability, whilst still eliminating the negative aspects of current flight that make ships feel a little too much like god mode. You could even make it lore friendly by saying that maneuvering thrusters are designed for space applications and thus their efficiency and thrust capability is lower in an atmosphere. IDK though this is definitely a step in the right direction. Hope they get the new flight model right and make things feel weighty and maybe make everything a bit slower paced in terms of acceleration in atmo.
I want hover mode back, it was not perfect then but a good basis to improve on. and in my opinion something like that is needed to give meaning to ground vehicule. having hover or low speed flight difficult to handle so you have to make a choice, do I land next to my objective on a difficult terrain, with high roisk of damagin my ship, or do y land in a safe place like a plain 10km from my objective and finish it with a rover or a cyclone?
@@hazelamberwood7376 I think hover mode shouldn’t just be a mode it should just be the default flight characteristic of ships with rotating VTOL thrusters. CIG has shown they also think this with newer ships like the hull A that acts sort of like hover mode used to in atmo. Hopefully they can make a challenging system that makes sense, is fun, and actually looks semi realistic
4:58 that's also not a MSR, but an Ares Starfighter Ion. And while the Crusader ships seem to have only flat but thick surfaces without room for control surfaces, their flying wing structures might hide more integrated control surfaces. Towards the center of the screen on the Ares you see how the wing gets thinner with lammels leading up to the point that's connected to the central fuselage. I believe that the majority of the wing is able to adjust along those lammels so that it's less of a classic control surface and more of an unbroken surface similar to the newer types of control surfaces that are currently developed.
I really enjoyed hover mode while we had it for a patch a few years ago and felt like I had almost mastered it before it was removed. At the time, the problem with it was it was far to hard to master for your average casual pilot. The never ending problem for CIG dev's is making the game both accessible to casual players as well as challenging for more "hardcore" pilots. If flight gets too complex it will 100% turn off a huge portion of potential backer/players. Personally i would like to see it more complex but fully understand that model will not pay the bills.
Agreed. While I appreciate the push toward a more accurate, more complex flight model, the complexity of the overall scope of the environment means that something has to give in order to maintain accessibility. There's SO much going on in the entire universe and if basic transportation is "overly" complex it can impact all the other systems.
That's a really great video! I had to rewind a lot, because those beautiful flight scenes amazed me too much and i would stop listening 😅 Very well done! Thank you much for sharing!
For ships with control surfaces where you remove or really lessen the effect of maneuvering thrusters, then landing one's ship (ships without VTOL capabilities) will be more along the lines of needing a runway. As I'm typing and watching you touch on this around the 7min mark of the video. So what I predict here for atmospheric flight, is that while they'll increase the effect of control surfaces, I don't think they'll totally remove maneuvering thrusters. I think they'll probably keep the same on the bottom thruster power but dramatically remove strafe FWD/BACK/LEFT/RIGHT. I think this will depend on some calculation of (control surface amt * ship mass) for each ship. When that calculated ratio goes below a certain ratio, a ship with very little control surfaces won't be able to fly in atmosphere very well, if at all. This will also depend on the planetary/moon body's atmosphere and gravity effects as well.
From how I read the post CIG made about control surfaces. Until you reach the speed where the control surfaces are able to work efficiently enough you will rely on the mav thrusters. As it says in the post "When a ship has detected it's going fast enough to sustain control surface flight, It can automatically shut down its maneuvering thrusters and start flying solely with control surfaces" This purely means until you hit the speed needed to generate enough lift to stay in the air you will use maneuvering thrusters like we do now. CIG doesn't need to make them weaker to achieve this. As they will literally just turn on and off when the ship is at the detected speed limits for control surface flight to start and stop.
Beautiful clips, and your analysis is spot on. I remember hearing a while ago that maneuvering thrusters would overheat, providing a clear hovering advantage to VTOL-engine ships.
they already implemented something like this in the past, and while it first was a bit of a pain, i like the skill needed to keep you ship in air, event with vtol. they downside was the missing stability while mining on a planet surface, therefore we need some sort of stability calculation like real life drones have for example.
@@mriuskraft prospector was fine, but the mole was painful, you could not solo it in atmo, but I think thats fine and should also be like that. Pilot takes care to be steady and miners got for it.
@@alexandrepv How are they supposed to fix bugs that are based on placeholder systems? They have to do the splits between keeping it playable and not wasting time on code they are going to through out eventually anyway. I don't really have an opinion on SQ42, but I think single player games are the definition of disposable games.
@@j.d.4697 You're telling me they spent all these years and all they have are "placeholder systems"? As a senior software engineer, this is plain bad pratice. Data scientists write "throw-away" code, but software engineers build systems based on requirements, which they don't seem to have. Lock your requimrents, create your sprints, deliver a minimum viable product, fix bugs during beta and improve after release. If their systems need to be completly overhauled, they should have considered Star Citizen 2, using an updated version of their engine built specifically for those new core mechanics.
@@alexandrepv It baffles me how you have literally no idea how anything works and claim to be a senior software engineer, yet can't even spell check your comment. I doubt any code you've ever written has seen the light of day, or that you've ever even written code, if you did it would be 98% bugs and 2% content.
@@dustinleebladesmith9135 Someone woke up on the wrong side of their bed :) You complain I don't know how anything works, and proceeds to not providing any supporting arguments on how it actually works, and then points out spell checks. Really mate? Ad-hominen? C'mon, you can do better. Please, I'm dying to know how a real engineer would do it. I'm all ears :)
Thrusters only need to made weaker in atmospheric conditions. IRL rocket thrusters are optimized for different pressures, with the help of the nozzle among other things.
Another way to limit over-reliance on Vtol (beyond elements like engine over-heating) is to make hovering require excessive volumes of fuel. Sure, larger ships with stronger engines might be able to hover longer, but it could come at the cost of time and money needed to refuel. Great video! 😁
One of the first Videos I saw on RU-vid right after Planet Tech went live was someone hovering a Gladius nose down about a foot off a planet. In the Video they were basically explaining to CIG why this should not be possible. We're hoping that atmospheric flight with control surfaces is when this would get straightened out. They tried once before with Hover Mode but it was universally hated so they backtracked on it.
Honestly hover mode was unpopular because of how janky it controlled. it was very off or on, and it never seemed to be tuned to the right speed. VTOLVR has a mode like this for it's two VTOL capable aircraft and it transitions smoothly between helicopter-like and aircraft-like flight (manually, but still smooth). SC's hover mode never did that. I think it'll ultimately end up a gradient as the video author hopes, because having be a binary is going to produce a particular speed for certain ships (varying by ship) where the controls are just mud, and then you slow down just a little and boom, thrusters kick in and your fine-ish again. That'll infuriate people for the same reasons hover mode did.
I used to scratch build scale RC planes and if I had to pick the best candidate for aerodynamic flight to make a flying model one of my top choices would be the Avenger Titan, yet in the games current iteration its among the worst flying small ships in atmosphere. I hope they fix that later where wing area and low drag shapes are more of an indicator of actual performance in atmosphere.
I think its going to come down to the type of ship that will determine if it has to rely on maneuvering thrusters/VTOL thrusters. While those ships that have a higher scm speeds will need to rely on control surfaces in atmo. I would hazard a guess that ships that fall under a specific threshold will have to rely on VTOL/maneuvering thrusters for movement. I look mainly at the small hull a and b series in particular. They do not have large enough wings for control surfaces. Also they don't have VTOL engines like we see with some of the other ships (cutlass, cutter, valkyrie, etc.).
I honestly doubt CIG will ever remove the ability for static hovers, at least when ships are upright, because they help make the flight model extremely accessible to new players. But I definitely would like to see at least changes that make it so you can't do a headstand in cargo ships. Always cool to hear your thoughts on stuff like this!
Casual players can suck Chris' big toe if they want accessibility... besides, more complexity and game mechanics are literally coming whether you like it or not, but that doesn't mean it makes it prohibitively harder to play...it just means you need to put more thought into what you're doing. No more absent-minded hovering in air, if you want to take a potty break or whatever then land your ship instead of being a dunce. Likely they will make fuel consumption a lot faster when hovering instead of completely getting rid of the ability, but ships without VTOL are going to suck so much fuel and be a lot more unstable that you really should just land instead or rethink whatever it is you're trying to do. Casual players need to go with the flow, not force the flow to change just for their convenience
@@tevarinvagabond1192 I think you've mistaken me saying I don't expect something to happen as me saying I don't want it to. I'm not saying casual players will force them to keep the static hovers, I'm saying that CIG has an interest in keeping the flight model approachable because it helps keep new players coming into the game and spending new money. In the end, I suspect that interest will win out over making as complete a simulation as possible.
Auto VTOL Ala osprey in current "milsims" like ARMA would solve this and give more importance to ship's like the aurora and cutter that have strong vtol built in. Then VTOL can be handled in things like the arrow, Gladius and such like and F35B, easy to hover, but extremely fuel consuming and requiring a quick transition to keep from crashing into the ground for more experienced players. Right now a hornet with ball and nose target can be as effective as a cutlass in a ground gunship role. Which the cutlass if you look at it is really thr space hind of the verse. If CIG is trying to mix and mash together cold war Era air and naval tactics "in space" then this would be a great fix as terrain reduces the need for speed in combat since you can use it for cover against installations. So you would reduce the ability for current ships to used in roles they are not intended to be used for places like asteroid fields which isn't very infantry friendly anyways.
@Tint to add onto this, vtol based craft could also have their fuel consumption be very linear for thrust (justified by the idea that the larger thrusters are more efficient for producing the amount of thrust given) with reductions in fuel consumption given for spacecraft that reach a large enough speed to produce lift without using their manager thrusters in atmosphere. This could force tactical fighters to limit their low speed maneuvers to key moments (like actual fighter craft that have to use high thrust and high angle of attack to reduce speed yet maintain lift) in order to increase loiter times, or be supported by low orbiting refueled and have to bounce in and out of atmosphere a lot. Right now anyone providing CAP or CAslS can switch to playing a gunship aka apache on easy mode at any time which really limits the PVP role choices. It would also reduce the amount of station griefers if VTOL gunships due to the lack of body lift had a reduced speed in atmosphere as getting away from CAP would be hard and tacfighters couldn't loiter around to chase anyone down.
There will be static hovers, it'll just be limited. I doubt engines will be weaker as BlackMaze has called out, I expect it will just be overheating and burning through fuel. If they make thrusters weaker it will eat into the space combat experience which needs stronger thrusters, not weaker for exciting combat.
It's very simple. If thrusters has sufficient to control a ship in atmo (like they do now) they you would make ships look like spheres or bricks. You would never put any aerodynamic surfaces on it because they would interfere with the thrusters efficacy. CIG is getting tripped up by making it look cool before figuring out how the rules work in their world. For what it's worth I agree with you OP and would like the atmospheric flight model to be a thing. I'd like piloting to be easy to learn but hard to master. Give it some nuance. Nice vid!
Related to the topic, if CIG wants to improve immersion with this, then they also need to enable actual use of landing wheels. Not all landing gears in game have wheels, some have skid plates or feet, but those that do (e.g., Origin 300 series) should be able to take off and land at higher speeds without a hovering stop. This would be extremely useful on heavy world planets. For dogfights in atmosphere, right now (perhaps fixed at least partially by control surfaces), we don't gain potential energy at altitude, and don't have the ability to spend potential energy and convert it to kinetic energy as we drop altitude. Ships with in excess of 1-to-1 thrust ratio don't "need" this, but if "altitude means energy and life" has a place in the fun of a dogfight, then more should be done with this in conjunction with aerodynamic surfaces. Incidentally, there is no reason one cannot keep thrusters on at all times, but use aerodynamic surfaces to supplement thrusters (or vice versa). Imagine the laughs a military pilot would get if someone suggested they shouldn't be allowed to thrust vector except just above stall speed. I think CIG would be "less than inspiring" and not adding to game play if they take it too far. On the other hand, if thrusters have a certain effect in a vacuum, but are supplemented by aerodynamics, it adds a completely new game dimension to choosing where to fight (pilots with ships having lower power thrusters and good aerodynamics would want to stay in atmosphere, but for cases where a pilot has less aerodynamic advantage in atmosphere compared to the enemy, then one would try to stay in space).
I think vertical thrusters for hover landing should use up some sort of boost/heat system where you can only sustain for x amount of time bade on fuel/cooling/overclock/parts etc. 1 thing that REALLY takes me out of immersion is the perfectr way ships hover/maneuver take off and land. like your controlling a floating asset in a game engine. i want there to be some sort of wobble and unpredictability when hovering and taking off so you have to control it more (dependent on ship and parts etc). now its just up and set speed perfectly like a 3d model. i want some character to it, heavy ships list and sway as mor epower is put down by thrusters. small ships wobble and shake etc. also side note: ship/engine start ups are so anticlimactic, *beep, power on bzzz*. I wanna start up noises, powering up turbines or reactor/engine, something to give the sense some ship your sat next to a powerful powerplant/engines. i mean look at real life cars/ jets i.e a-10. the start up is a ball tingling event. there's no sense of mechanics or personality right now, they seem like 3d models..they look and sound/feel so much cooler and epic in the cutscenes they make or in most over game with ships
love it. imo the best answer is give all ships VTOL which redirects the main engines into upward thrust. ships which can only redirect thrust should have a significant disadvantage to ships which can actually rotate their thrusters.
A audio alarm not a constant one but something, not on the HUD only. sound the alarm when the ship transitions to and from thrust controlled flight. once that happens have the ship start using boost. once you're out of boost you can no longer hover. ships like the galdius could use boost quickly in this state as provisions for long boost assisted flight would not have been a design choice with large wings. while others with Vtol can hover indefinitely but with increased main fule use, and boost needed at transitional speeds.
This is incredible footage btw. The narative is spot on and the science of flight is... dude... chefs kiss. Thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!! They all need to be aware of and prepared for this! This will bring me back to the game 100,000%
I'm with you. Big ships without vtol should feel super heavy in atmo, and fighters with weak support thrusters should be landing more like a plane, rather then hover. You can get a little bit of this feel by flying de-coupled and avoiding upthrust as much as you can in atmo, but it still doesn't quite feel like surface control flight. Also love the idea of the control thrusters heating up much faster but I think for these things to work they would have to remodel the hangars to extend outwards as if it was a mini landing strip as they have gravity and would be very hard for a new player to land or take off if they couldn't use thrusters. The biggest problem is vertical hangars like in lorville and other vertical hangars around in planets or stations, but as long as they were horizontal it would be great (and MUCH easier) to just use throttle to launch yourself off the hangar and then fly naturally outside.
CIG could keep the strength of the maneuvering thrusters, but only the bottom ones, thus keeping Vertical Takeoffs but still giving a edge to physical control surfaces
About hovering, it is much easier to do in ground effect. If you are close enough to the ground you get the ground effect "cushion" that provides extra lift. Hover can be OGE (Out of Ground Effect) or IGE (In Ground Effect) and IGE is much easier than OGE. Ask any helicopter pilot or even people who play rotary winged aircraft in DCS. Even if there is no atmosphere the exhaust gasses from ventral thrusters could still provide a limited amount of ground effect from hitting the surface, bouncing off, then striking the bottom of the ship. I think the real big change to hovering is more that only the bottom thrusters will be the only RCS thrusters strong enough to do it. No more hovering inverted or at pitch angles that either aren't completely straight up or straight down (because mains and retro). The guns on many attack helicopters are articulating for a reason.
I've been excited about this for a while now, but I never really thought too much about the ships - which have control surfaces, which have vtol, which have both, which have neither -- until now. And yeah, there's some pretty good variety! That Khartu-Al / Banu Defender may be a tough cookie in space, but you bring it into atmo and it's toast. The four 'main' starters: Aurora, Mustang, Cutter, and Pisces each have different flight setups making for a very distinct starting experience and strengths. Cutter, for example, isn't something you would want to do combat with, and good luck dogfighting in space let alone atmo -- but put it into vtol and it's a close air support ship to support the buddy or two you hot dropped to take out an above ground outpost mission. Mustang, with it's control surfaces, is the starter for dogfighting and likely will be great in atmo for that. But you go to space and the aurora will more than hold it's own in that arena, owing to it's smaller cross section. Reliant Tana is the 'smallest' and 'cheapest' vtol dedicated fighter and as a two person ship with remote turrets could see a revival of popularity as a great CAS option. The Hornet could be given a vtol 'swapable' for it's middle box/turret/radar section to suit it to a completely new role. (which would be super cool in SQ42)
The catch is that maneuvering thrusters still have to be strong enough that you can take off and land on an airless moon, where control surfaces are worthless.
100% Agree it just so strange and immersion breaking to see ships float on odd angles. I dont know how you would change this but it makes VTOL ships more ideal for atmosphere and space flight. Love the idea that some ships are just designed for space flight (IE the Caterpillar) and some are designed for both. Huge change I know but would be awesome.
Starwars has a atmosphere "type" system in regard to common breathable. Maybe planets could be labeled under types so we know flight characteristics. a type 0 would be space like, type 1 would be thin, type 2 would be earth like, and 3 would be thick. (just a basic idea)
I've imagined that ship shields could act as configurable control surfaces. So they'd form a part of a ship's lifting surface at a basic level and actively deform at higher levels. Something non aerodynamic like the Starfarer might, for example, envelope those vulnerable high drag tanks and catwalks in a sleeker shield form. A higher tech approach, one that might take up blade space, would be for the shield to be actively shaped to form equivalents to the mechanical wing flaps for ships lacking such. Shield emitters designed to efficiently form atmospheric control surfaces would likely be less effective as defensive shields, so you'd plausibly need to have trade offs vs. defense screens.
Great video. As a flight sim fan i will love this change. Ships always felt too floaty in atmosphere for me. Also there there are a couple of moments where you have some weird static in the audio like at 11:50
The "binary" feel of thrusters vs. surfaces feels right to me. I imagine thrusters have to use a lot of hydrogen fuel depending on the atmosphere density and gravity, so the ship's systems would balance the two flight modes for the sake of economy - you could still use your thrusters to maneuver down to the surface but maybe you aren't left with enough fuel to get out of the atmosphere later? If they go that way in the PU then I hope they add some hydrogen refuel possibilities at all proper landing pads because otherwise the ground around the pads will be littered with caterpillar wrecks 😉 Good vid!
Really looking forward to these changes, they haven't been discussed enough. It will be great to have some functional distinction (vacuum/multirole/atmospheric) between weight classes (light/medium/heavy). I look at the Aurora and think "it's a brick" but it should be Very maneuverable in vacuum since it is considerably lighter than an Arrow, the MAV thrusters are placed well for high rotational acceleration & besides the bed it is just an engine & S1 components. I do think that Starter Ships, particularly Aurora/Mustang need to have some edge in flight, somewhere (besides range) on military class ships. Military class ships generally need a lot more draw-backs and should be less prevalent in the verse, even as PvP mains. When I see an Arrow, or a Gladius, or a Hornet, etc - I want to feel like I'm in a warzone. If you are close to a military base, you don't think much of seeing military vehicles coming/going - but if you constantly get buzzed by F18's on your commute into the city you'd probably think about staying at home. I look forward to the day where my Gladius isn't my daily driver, but instead is sat under a tarp in my hangar and is only taken out for training or war.
If they are going to limit the amount of time you can hover then they are going to need to dramatically improve lighting in space. The number of times I have had to hover around while trying to land on a space station or even a planetary hanger is quite extensive, and it all due to being able to actually see the hanger I am supposed to land in. In general lighting around landing areas is awful. During the day it isn't an issue but get them in the dark and I spend more time trying to find the hanger than I do flying to the city from space.
This won't change ship behavior in space, this is based on atmospheric flight due to gravity and air resistance. I do agree that they will have to modify the planet side landing zones to accommodate new landing techniques.
I think it would be cool to have runways alongside landing pads on planetary bases/outposts/etc. The only problem I have though is the fact that very few aircraft that would require a runway to land, such as small/medium fighters who don't (or shouldn't anyway) have powerful enough thrusters to allow them to make a VTOL landing, also don't have proper wheeled landing gear, but retracting legs, and the ones that DO have wheeled gear don't have the proper physics applied to said rolling surfaces. Still, I think it would be fun to have to do a proper landing like planes do today, having to manage your approach with airspeed, elevation, etc., instead of just being able to come in hot and heavy, slam on the brakes and belly-flop onto the pad basically. I myself find enjoyment in a nice, proper, soft landing, so I take my time and make sure my landings are something a real pilot would be proud of. Lol
I can see how the aero can be fighting against the Mavs and requiring the latter to be offline. At the same time I feel like boost should override the lock and let you use Mavs in atmospheric flight.
I have been waiting for control surfaces a while. They can just power curve tune out the thrusters with IFCS fly by wire to use them when it needs. All ships have VTOL toggle even if they don't have apparent VTOL thrusters for a reason and why we have the arcade model in atmo today. An older attempt was depending on the ships stall speed they had to switch to VTOL mode where thrusters did the heavy lifting at the cost of agility. Last time they did it ships became unstable like a helicopter hovering unless you had purpose made VTOL ships and could crash if not careful like a real helicopter pitching too much to maintain lift and was always drifting/fighting so you couldn't stay still IIRC. Back then surfaces and physics model were not ready and tuning the thrusters ended up with the compromise we have today that erases VTOL mode on most ships except the ones that use main engines, but it just transfers forward to strafe up thrust. That's why they showed off that tool that helped them visualize ship thruster forces recently. They are taking a stab at control surfaces and redoing landing/VTOL mode and master modes which we also had before in the past. Definitely going to be an exciting future for SC flight and combat.
If we want to talk about the original concept and "ultra-realism", then ships like the caterpillar, and 890 jump should NOT have the capability to land on planets with a dense atmosphere. From a design perspective, they were made for space flight. I remember Chris Roberts saying way back that the whole cargo delivery system would work with ships like the caterpillar or the Hull-Series delivering goods to a space station in orbit, then have smaller ships transport those goods planet-side. I think that might be a good idea with the new changes to control surfaces and thrusters, and would open up a whole range of player-driven career loops (atmospheric cargo haulers, atmospheric piracy...etc)
I'm actually kind of excited to see how the caterpillar will handle in atmosphere. it's clearly designed to land, but it doesn't have VTOL the way you'd expect. maybe they're going to give the bottom thrusters a little bit of extra oomph? i could see how you could potentially use the body for lift but slowing it down to land sounds interesting.
As a Cat person, I agree. Landing one should (imo) take a while. Perhaps not a whole gaming session, but at least A LOT of planning before entering atmo and going dirtside😁
I think some ships ought to get adjustable afterburner nozzles á la jet fighters, would make hovering look much better and could work in conjunction with control surfaces to reduce dependence on maneuvering thrusters. Also main thrusters should be turned off/idle when hovering in place if they're not adjustable. Nothing sillier than when it looks like they're firing at full capacity when you're completely still and the maneuvering thrusters are doing all of the work.
I've always felt like all the VTOL ships don't look realistic at all. They instantly switch to in flights mode when retracting the landing gear, even when still hovering. It never made sense to me, this would be a welcome change! It would make flying so much more immersive imo!
You made some salient points sir throughout an excellent video. Showing, through the skill of your org, what could be whilst you narrated was brilliant. What a well produced thoughtful video. Glad to have you in the community.
I think some ship being unable to fly in the atmosphere would make a lot of sense. For example the 890 Jump. There's no way a few tiny thruster can lift that giant ship in earth like gravity.
Can't wait until we get aerodynamics into the game. Light fighters behaving more like jet fighters on planets would be so amazing, like rolling the ship should make it turn. Also it would make the game more exciting and have players dock from bigger ships above orbit and going down with smaller ships.
It could a nice bit of variation in that some ship require more skill to use, and some are more forgiving. should be fun. Also, mavs ought to kick in when requested rate is higher than what control surfaces alone can offer and not just rely on "are we about to stall". Otherwise we're going to have some weirdness where our ships aren't as maneuverable as current vectored thrust fighters and it'll be like we're regressing, not 950 years into the future.
What is the use of control surfaces when you are in space? Space movement would rely entirely on thrust. It would be interesting to see two separate systems...but since we are visiting different planets with different atmospheres how would your ship compensate for that difference?
There would be no use to control surfaces in space. This video is entirely about how the balance shifts from one scenario to the other. Pay attention! :D
The first time hover and vtol mode was introduced there was massive backlash and it was removed. We have to find an answer for how ships like the Cat can stay aloft on such tiny thrusters, I've always hated how most ships act like they have very little mass and extremely powerful and precise thrusters.
its so unimmersive imo. i hate it. it feels like I'm in 3DS max moving 3d models around not flying a heavy ship. a Cat shouldn't be able to hover and maneuver good AT ALL on planets with gravity..its a space lorry. it should do just enough to get off the ground and fly into space, lift off thrusters have a limited time to boost up and engage main engines. then skilled cat pilots will be a thing and worth something to ppl. always a danger of babyfying SC with all the new reactionary players and the set in their way older players who hate any change
I really hope they allow us to enable vector hold mode without landing gear... Give me that starwars landing effect where you extend the gears in the last second :).
I'd guess weakening the thrusters ready for atmo flight would negatively affect the ship performance in space? That would be unhelpful XD More likely, the control surfaces will be used to sharpen handling and if thrusters are disabled and/or improve range from the space engines by using traditional lift? The more you have the better the handling. Also, I saw none of the examples have LEADING edge flaps. These are used to maintain airflow over the wing at progressively higher angles of attack eg on takeoff. Only trailing edge flaps, ailerons, are visible which are responsible for roll / trim. Both of these would suggest IMO that thrusters will play an important part of Star Citizen physics.
this is a nice development coming and hopefully done well! One thing I never understood is, why the maneuvering thrusters are so overpowered. I see what small to heavy fighters need powerful thrusters in fight for strafing and outmaneuver the opponents. it makes sense that they have a more than 1G accelleration on their thrusters. But that made never sense to me on ships like the Constellation, Caterpillar or even a Cutlass. Every ship that is big enough to have VTOL capabilities should not be able at all to hover in place on any planet with just their thrusters. On moons that's fine but not on the main planets with 1G and definitely not on crusader. Same for landing pads. if the landing gear is down, every ship with VTOL should also switch to VTOL mode by itself. Otherwise it should smash hard into the pads when gravity kicks in.
I'm super excited by this change to come. It will be interesting to see what it does to racing. I expect every existing race track will be no longer viable, especially with tight turns. They'll have to go back to the drawing board. I'm fine with that though. It will make combat way more dynamic with a completely different experience in different atmospheres (of vacuum) you have to adapt to.
Many SC ships are Space Only by design. Any decent into atmosphere should be a death sentence unless the main engines are pointed straight at the ground and you fly directly away from the planet. Also the consumption of hydrogen fuel should be proportional to the throttle of the engines. Hovering should deplete your fuel tank rather quickly. Large cargo ships may need a full fuel tank just to contemplate a surface landing and you had better consult your ship's computer to make sure that the gravity isn't too much for your VTOL engines. If you're close to the limit, you'll need a slow and controlled decent to avoid crashing into the surface. Flight computers of drones limit decent rates based on thrust-to-weight ratio.
5:30 I disagree... while i feel that control surfaces should have a significant effect on movement in atmosphere, these are "space" ships... they absolutely should be able to hover and hold their position, and orientations while doing so in any gravity that their thrusters have the power to do so
Both, control surfaces, vtols and manoeuvring could work together, for brief boosts. A ship with VTOL engines could simply take off and land as an Osprey, without much concern, but be slower when the engines look down: if it's a brick like a RAFT, then just hover if you want to fly. A small fighter should have enough lift to land vertically, but not indefinitely and certainly not outside a flat horizontal attitude. Get to speed and fly like a plane. A "Big Chungus" like a 600i could partially use a lifting body at high speed and rely on manoeuvring thrusters to move around and land.: certainly NOT hover on it's nose A box with engines, like a Caterpillar, would rely on those engines to keep flying, trying to stay as horizontal as possible to maximize the thrust. All good, but where is the MASS? A Fully loaded Hercules nowadays flies like a medium fighter, which is "slightly" off to me,, especially since I've never heard of Mass as a concern to be addressed by CIG.
In atmo needs the most work, it still feels too much like space flight. For example right now I can be racing down a river and completely come to a stop and reverse rather than gliding using my wings as youd expect.
They got to do something about certain ships like The Nomad with the Services change things as much as you say they do ships like The Nomad would become next to worthless
What if some large cargo type ships that were not originally designed for flying in the atmosphere needed the assistance of specialized VTOL aircraft to keep it up. So a player would need to request assistance where NPC ships would then come attach themselves to their craft so they can land or take off safely and not just fall out of the sky like a brick. It could add a new dimension to combat where players could now target the attached VTOL crafts to knock a ship out of the air while its moving from the surface of a planet to space.
Didnt they already try this and realise the reclaimer physically couldnt take off from a planet? Tbh im fine with the reclaimer being a space only ship though. I also hope they can find a solution that doesnt make maneuvering thrusters useless in space, because one of the things i hate about our current flight model is that any ship but a small fighter or racer feels like a fat guy on ice-skates whenever you try to change direction.
Heck, some ships should not be designed to land on planets. And not *just* the gigantic ones; it's OK to have dedicated spaceframes, the stations and the fact you can use smaller parasite shuttles for trips to the dirt should more than allow for such to work in the game.
I am hoping star citizen has a auto level flight assist system upgrade that prevents large ships flipping in atmo and makes them super easy to fly in turtle mode but not fast, so hammerhead c2 bmm 890j as they really don't behave like heavy ships yet in atmo, tho the HH is the best ship got belly crawling moons cos of its lower cockpit
