[Suggestion] Complete aircraft overhaul.

It's the "A2A only" part that worries me. So now the dominant air fighter is cheap and disposable? What chance to Libs have? And don't kid yourself that we'll ever have enough pilots or the player mindset to fly escort.

There are better solutions. Instead, I much prefer additional penalties for wing mounted weapons. Such as a faster lock time and farther auto-detect, thanks to the bigger radar signature from bulky weapons hanging off the wings. Less fuel/no fuel to balance wing mount power. Analog Throttle locking the aircraft in hover to help new pilots. More inertia to aircraft so they're not as twitchy so we can move away from flak/lock-ons to more engaging direct fire, give traditional maneuvers a place, and also help noobs land some shots instead of none. There are so many better solutions than to push a boring rock-paper-scissors balance approach.

Who cares about balancing nightmares?
This thread is about a complete overhaul which will never happen, so we are just speculating about things devs will never even consider. We can even discuss about ESF firing orbital strikes but it is just pointless chitchat like if we were sitting at the pub while having a beer

I started playing a year ago and the only reason I invested in to such an old game is because it had a new owner who was willing to make big changes and continue to develop. They added construction and completely overhauled continent locking. I have no doubt that a complete aircraft overhaul is within reason. As air is my favorite aspect of the game, I think it's worthwhile to put in my 2 cents where possible. Reddit is an echo chamber, but maybe something I say sounds right to someone and they pass it on to the cool kids over there where the devs hang out. I don't know. But I want to see the game do well, so I pitch in constructive criticism wherever I can.

Or you can just nerf hover mode maneuverability to the point that it's useless for anything else than landing, and give player proper controls to the mode switch so they don't accidentally brick their planes. Boom, no practical combat hover without having to make them disposable.

The completely unintended hover-dominated flight mechanics, which the devs never fixed or even properly implemented after they decided they like it, have simply been the breeding ground for the most toxic and elitist sub-community of the entire game throughout its entire life anyway.

The hover mechanic is awesome. It makes flying in this game incredibly unique and fun. Another great feature of it is it allows aircraft to effectively fight within such a crazy small bubble where everything renders. The two BIG problems with hover are that 1) It takes a lot of time to get good at. Changing "analog throttle" to a toggle that locks the motors vertical would be a huge help. And 2) It's the be all end all tactic. Adding more inertia to aircraft (sluggishness in all direction changes, accel/decel) would give traditional maneuvers a place. Combine that twitchyness with terrible controls (built in mouse acceleration, aiming with A&D) and pinpoint weapons makes targeting out of reach for the first several hundred hours. In short, hover shouldn't be removed, but it drastically needs an overhaul.

The hover mechanic combined with the reverse maneuver is extraordinarily toxic because it makes flying aircraft way way to hard and gives crippling advantages to veteran pilots over new pilots on expensive vehicles (350 or 450 nanites). A new player with a tank can sit back reasonably safe in friendly lines and learn to play the tank. A new player in an ESF or Lib. is just going to be shot down after 1 min. or less of combat - if they don't crash on the way there. Friendly lines are no protection for aircraft against veteran pilots.

The only way to make hover reasonable is to make it stationary hover with very very slow side-slip, vertical climb or reverse. As it stands, veterans can side-slip, reverse and climb at 100+ kph - almost instantly. Your inertia idea might work for those quick maneuvers, but the max speed at which they can be flown should not be in the game. And by-the-way, there is an instant all-stop stationary hover button, it really helps with reverse maneuvers . I use the keypad + mouse instead of A & D + mouse for aiming. I will grant that the yaw control is too slow. I've flown a real plane and the yaw responds much faster - scary fast in a real plane when combined with a bank.

That button is called "analog throttle", and I've been proposing since the beginning that it lock the engines in hover, which would make hover fighting much easier for new pilots, and more enjoyable for everyone else.

Locking would make them sitting ducks....I think the full stop works well - although I still think no hover at all would be best.

Hover is the most defensive ESF position by a long shot. You can't know how to fix a problem if you don't fully understand what's wrong. Not to mention, hover making a pilot a "sitting duck" completely contradicts your other position of hover being a "crippling advantage". So which one is it?

Analog throttle locking the engines down till you press the W key to get out of hover would be a great change to help level the playing field.