Will the new flight model make it almost impossible for a pilot to hold an immobile ship at a weird angle 10 meters off the surface of the planet?
TL;DRHolding a ship still at an odd angle near the surface depends on ship and gravity: easy in low gravity, hard for larger ships in strong gravity, though strong-engined ships like the Gladius can manage.
So that depends on the ship. Depends on the planet. Obviously, if you're on Delamar, where there's hardly any atmosphere, you can do that. It's no different to being in space, essentially. Well, actually, I correct myself. I don't mean less atmosphere, I mean less gravity. That was a mistake. Yeah, when there's less gravity, you can do that. In places like Hurston, where the gravity is really strong, a lot of the ships really struggle, and generally they struggle the bigger they are. So something small like the Merlin can do that, and something like a Cutlass is going to struggle. And you'll see, if you roll over in the Cutlass such that it doesn't have as much thrust anymore because your VTOLs are now not pointed down, the thing will start doing this, and you do it more, it'll start drifting down more and more, and then you rotate it back again and it'll kind of steady itself. So yes, you can no longer do that, but as I said, it depends on the ship, for sure. The Gladius actually can hover like this, because the mains are really strong.
They're so powerful. If you get into that balancing point, it can stay there. The main thrusters are just firing at full tilt.
As long as the main thruster is below you. If you're like this, I've seen ships hovering with their nose 10 meters off the ground.
That will drift down, for sure. And when you've got your Gladius hovering like this, you should see all the thrusters firing to keep it steady, which is cool.