Is it planned that less agile ships without VTOL thrusters would have their maneuverability decreased when flying non-horizontally in atmosphere?
TL;DRYes, this has started to appear in 3.1.4, where big heavy ships need VTOL mode or correctly oriented thrust in atmosphere, and atmospheric flight will keep being iterated on.
Absolutely. So it's something that's actually started to get in game with the latest patch for 3.1, 3.1.4. There were so many that I lost track of them. The big ships, Reclaimer especially now, you have to be in VTOL mode or you have to have your engines orientated appropriately to counter that. And other ships of similar ilk, if they're big, they're heavy, they either need VTOL thrusters or you need to pay attention to where your thrust is orientated relative to the gravity of the planet, otherwise bad times.
Now, of course, we talked to John Pritchett a couple weeks ago that this is just the next step in an ongoing series of revisions and adjustments. So I just don't want anybody to think 3.1.4 is it and we're done working on atmosphere flight. We'll continue to iterate, we'll continue to tweak and modify and take your feedback into consideration in this patch and future patches.
Yeah, it's a great taster of how it behaves. I've been reading a lot of the feedback. There's a lot of people going, this is great, this is how I always envisioned it. And then there's the people that haven't realized this is a thing and are smashing into planets left, right, and center. And then they realize it's a thing.