With all the changes to the flight model being geared towards combat and slowing things down, what are the knock-on effects for racing? How do we slow combat down and still enable racing?
TL;DRIt's a fine line: racers can be fast but must not become better combat ships, so they'd look at other advantages like handling, sustained G in turns or atmospheric performance instead of top speed.
It's a tricky one. It's a fine line, because certainly past history has shown that the faster things get, the better they are, because they're harder to hit. No matter how weak you make them, if you can get a bit of paper with four size 10 guns on it, you're going to win every fight because you'll hit first. So it is a fine line of letting racers be fast, but not allowing them to be so overgunned that they become better combat ships than the dedicated combat ships. So we have to look at other ways, like maybe they're not technically the fastest on paper in a straight line, but they have the best handling. Maybe they can sustain more G in turns, maybe they're better in atmosphere, all these little things we can add that when you put them all together make a nice handling agile ship that isn't the de facto best combat ship.