How long can VTOL ships expect to hover before they start to damage their maneuvering thrusters?
TL;DRThere is no set hover time before overheating and nothing for it in 3.10; it will depend on thruster and ship design, and for now thrusters just cut out, with an option to turn that off planned later.
So we don't have a current time frame of how long they're going to currently overheat for. And this is not something that's going to be in 3.10, but this is something we're looking at where it's going to depend on the size of the thrusters, the amount of power the thrusters develop and the size of the ship and the design of the ship as well. So this is something which will come in a later release, but it's not something that's going to come for 3.10.
Yeah, like Rich said, it's a very hard question to answer because there's so many ships with so many configurations, but generally those that have VTOLs will take longer, if at all, to get to the point where overheating damage is. At the moment in 3.10, we do have that limit. So when they overheat, they just cut out to stop you damaging it. But in a future patch, we'll give you the option to turn that off if you're a madman that you want to artificially risk your life.
And I would imagine that's, of course, assuming you're using the VTOLs. If you haven't switched your Cutlass into VTOL mode or your Reclaimer into VTOL mode, then it's not providing any relief for your maneuvering thrusters at all at that point.
Yeah, if you're not using the thrusters, then they don't consume any fuel, they don't heat up, they don't have a risk of being damaged.