Didn't we do some version of this before with the old hover mode?
TL;DRJohn says the old hover mode was the right idea with the wrong implementation, and heat from straining thrusters could be added as a penalty for hovering, tied to the resource system being redone.
To an extent, yes. But that sort of tried to solve the problem in a different way. And some people liked it. A lot of people didn't like it. And it was the right idea with not quite the right implementation. Another thing we can look at, with all the stuff Richard's talked about, is heat. We don't really use heat at the moment, because the way heat works in our game is not how we want it to work long term, and this is something that, with the resource system, is being entirely redone. But for ships like a Gladius, as well as needing that control surface to keep it up in the air, if you're not going fast, those thrusters can start overheating as an extra penalty. Because in reality, you could just upend your Gladius like that and balance it on its main thrusters, because they're powerful enough to do that, so they should be powerful enough to do that. But they're going to be working so hard that that heat is going to build up, and we can cause intentional problems that way to stop it. I've seen people landing their Scorpiuses on the wings that way, and that sort of stuff will start being a lot more rare.