Back to search

We've had a lot of talk lately about jerk and the increased weight of ships. How do both of those change the general feel of flight in space? For example, are ships less or more responsive when they are below cruise speeds compared to 3.9.1?

TL;DRJerk and weight don't change initial responsiveness but make ships, especially bigger ones, slower to settle back to zero, and the team will keep tuning it based on player feedback in later releases.

Richard TowlerVehicle Experience Product Owner

So it hasn't really changed the responsiveness of the ships in terms of the initial movement. But what it does is it changes the time it takes the ship to automatically come back. So the ships feel heavier in that sense. So if you move the ship and then basically let go of the controls, on the bigger ships, you really feel the ship will take a lot of time to correct itself and go back to zero. Whereas the smaller ships will feel responsive compared to that. But you'll still feel a small bit of jerk in that. But it's much more prominent on the bigger ships at the moment. And again, back to your point, this is something we've put in the game for the first time. And we're currently evaluating it ourselves. As more players get their hands on it, we're getting more and more feedback towards how it's affected the feel of combat and the feel of flying in general. So it is something we're going to tune for this release, which we have, and then we're going to tune it for the next release and the next release beyond as well.

Jared HuckabyHost, Community

You make a great point, Richard. It's good enough that I want to reiterate it, that 3.10 is the next step in Star Citizen's continuing evolution of flight mechanics. It is not the final step. So it is the next big leap forward, and it's just as important to get these changes out there to improve the player experience, but also to generate the feedback that we need to continue improving and continue iterating as things go forward.

John CreweVehicle Director

And similar to what we talked about on Inside Star Citizen last week, I think it was last week or maybe it was the week before, it's very hard to just read this or see us talking about it and go, yes, that's how it feels. You need to get in there and play it because responsiveness is subjective. Everyone feels it differently and just looking at a number in a spreadsheet doesn't give you that actual feeling of how it plays.

Star Citizen Live›Targets, Turrets & Take-Offs·
Published on this date.3 Jul 2020
EpisodeFlight modelShips