Ship and Combat balance?

Okay, anything else besides the laterals? Like the enemy ships for instance? Main thruster speed/acceleration etc.?

Well, it's kinda hard to tell, really. I think the AI ships (escorts in particular) are suffering for lack of lateral thrusters as well. I think they are set waaay too low, even for the computer to deal with.

I think there should be a lower set speed. 9999 set speed is too fast, and by the time I navigate the star map and locate a destination, I'm too far off course, and have to turn around using one leg...or auto-pilot (which I prefer to avoid).

Hull and LDAs for NPC ships seem to be rather extensive. The only way I found to get passed LDAs is attacking it as a sub-system. I like that combat takes longer though, and is tougher then normal EoC...both that my tug is tougher and the enemy is tougher.

Do you think it is more enjoyable being forced to target sub-systems? Does it add more challenge and stragtegy to the battle? Something we were looking at increasing was the strategic aspect of battles, and at face value it seems that if you are targeting sub-system it might be more strategic.

I am already looking at lowering the set speed for player ships. As I think JT mentioned, we can just use the over ride thruster if we really want to go faster than 9999 or whatever.

I am also testing out new models with actually much much lower laterals for AI ships, as it seems that is the only way to make them move in more sinuous, arching patterns, similar to Iwar1.

Do you think it is more enjoyable being forced to target sub-systems?

In one-on-one combat (or even two-on-one), I like it, but I've always targeted sub-systems even in regular EoC. But with the invulnerable hulls and LDAs, more the two-on-one is suicide.

So far, the escorts I've hired haven't been of much use. I think they are having problems closing to target...as they aren't that smart to begin with.

I like the old set speeds. Faster for small ships, slower for large, bulky freighters...around 750-800 for a tug.

I am also testing out new models with actually much much lower laterals for AI ships,

Ok. Why would you want to set laterals even lower????

Why would I want to set the NPC ships laterals lower (NPC ships only that is.)? Well because of this data GrandpaTrout posted:

name accel lateral roll pitch yaw
player 220 85 60 60 60
puffin 50 9.8 40 20 35

navy patcom 80 6 32 32 32
navy corvette 70 5 20 20 20

black patcom 90 7.5 41 41 41
black corvette 75 6 30 30 30

destroyer 20 3 14 14 14
cruiser 20 3 5 5 5

missile 1000 125 220 120 0

(Sorry, the cut and past formating didn't work so well)

This is data from Iwar 1 that shows pretty clearly the NPC and player ship's setup were very different and the NPC ships in particular had very weak lateral thrusters. We are assuming that this made for their more flowing flight patterns. In the tests I am doing, this assumption seems to be holding mostly true.

So you are looking for a more conventional, atmospheric(sp?) flight model in space (with pseudo-newtonian aspects)? Kinda like wing commander?