An issue brought up frequently is the skill gap between beginner and experienced pilots. The very first port of call any pilot has to make on the road to becoming an effective pilot is learning the reverse manoeuvre. As it is, this adds an interesting and fun mechanics to the way air battles work and removing it at this stage would be completely tone deaf to what players want. Making it easier and more intuitive to perform however would help bridge the gap. The pilot should be able to toggle between Flight mode and Hover mode at will, regardless of speed, using a key bind. Ideally, the craft should not shift into hover at low speed as it does now, or if it does, have it lock in hover once it shifts. Having the ability to toggle like this gives players the freedom to choose their current flight state and doing so would still allow experienced pilots to perform all the flight tricks they currently do, without having to fight against the flight system. The aircraft are obviously designed to be capable of both hover and full forward flight modes, so why isn't the pilot simply given control over this?
So… something like an analog throttle which you can find, if I recall right, in vehicle keybindings tab?
No. The game is already so dumbed down that i can let my dog run around on my keyboard and win. And as someone already said there is already a button for that called analog throttle. Map it, use it, win!
Analog throttle doesn't lock your thrusters. You've still gotta mess about with making sure you keep your angular velocity below a certain threshold so they don't snap back up. And I don't see how that'd make it harder. Instead of mashing analog throttle 0 to go into hover you'd just mash hover mode. Then you can afterburn to your heart's content without having to worry about making sure you keep your thrusts down. Then you just toggle back as soon as you want forward thrust.
I don't know if you noticed mate, but the gigantic learning curve and inaccessibility of this game is what is keeping more people from playing. Compare PS2's player base now to a year ago or even just as far back as January and you'll see the decline. Please don't confuse accessibility with "dumbing down any noob can play" either. Hover fights will still be hover fights and how you manoeuvre and aim in those will still determine who wins. Knowing how to evade enemy rockets will still be necessary to ground pound.
