Free flight is nice, flight assist is also, but I´d like to suggest a third way that might be called ´thrust assist´: In free flight, you apply thrust and the ships starts to move, and it keeps moving like that until you apply thrust into another direction. With flight assist, you set up a speed to maintain and the ship moves to where you point it to --- though you can still apply thrust like in free flight, you can´t fly backwards.

The ´thrust assist´ would be like free flight, but the ship would _not_ continue to move once thrust has been applied. It would move only so long as you press the button to apply the thrust and stop moving into the associated direction once you release the button.

Please don´t confuse it with flight assist, it´s very similar, but not the same. Hm, it is what doesn´t work for forwards and backwards movement, but for other directions, when flight assist is enabled.

yun: hold down the space bar while applying thrust in physics ('free flight') mode.

You mean the brake?

Once you release it, the ship goes back to the preset forward speed. And can you toggle the brake?

With FA off, your ship will not automatically increase back to the preset forward speed. Turn FA off and maneuver while holding the space bar. You could also rig up a bind to set the space bar to toggle the brake, so you don't even have to hold it.

Oh, now I see what you mean. A toggle with FA off might help, I haven´t tried that. Without a toggle, it seems to stop working once you press too many buttons at once.

That's a limitation of your keyboard, not the game.

You can create a toggle with a bind.

I haven't tested this (making it up on the spot) but you could try the following:

alias brakeon "+Brakes; alias braketoggle 'brakeoff'; echo 'Brakes ON'"
alias brakeoff "+Brakes 0; alias braketoggle 'brakeon'; echo 'Brakes OFF'"
alias braketoggle "brakeon"
bind B braketoggle

pressing shift+B should then turn on the brakes until you press it again (tapping the brake key may also deactivate them, not sure)

You can build a toggle bind for just about any movement function in a similar fashion.

More info on binds (such as how to install) can be found here: http://www.vo-wiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Binds

It's probably more useful to just get used to flying in physics mode (FA off) and using the brake when you need it to slow down and stop than it is to continually apply the brake though, unless you need to make some really fine position adjustments (laying mines in pretty patterns?) since you can only accelerate to maybe 1/5 full speed while the brakes are engaged.

alias Thrust_Assist_ON "+Turbo; Accel -1000; echo '>>> Thrust Assist ON <<<'"
alias Thrust_Assist_OFF "+Turbo 0; Accel +0; echo '<<< Thrust Assist OFF >>>'"
bind "w" Thrust_Assist_ON
bind "s" Thrust_Assist_OFF

I think this is more what he intended. The bind you made, Spark, is just Spacebar, in practice :)

NOTE: Flight Assist MUST MUST MUST be on for this to work. Otherwise, it's an elaborate Turbo bind in Physics mode.

So you want it that if you want to translate to the side (or up, down, etc), the game automatically stops your fighter when you let go of the button. Believe it or not, the game already can pretty much do this for you. Turn on fight assist, reduce your forward thrust to zero, and hit one of the movement buttons. Notice how your fighter will move to the sides or up and down as long as you're pressing the button, and stops when you let go.

To go forward is a little more complicated because you have to add forward thrust and then hit the brakes to stop, but that's not REALLY all that bad. And honestly, the times when I need to go backwards for a precise distance are so rare that I just turn off flight assist, just barely tap the back button so that my movement is very slow, and when I want to stop, I just hit the brakes.

Unfortunately, I really don't see the point of adding a "thrust assist" mode. Flight assist (or free flight and hold down brakes) already pretty much does what I think you want it to do, and the times when you need precise six-axis movement are so rare, and the percentage of the player base that would actually use the mode is so small that I feel that it wouldn't be worth the developers' time to implement it.

mold:

That's what he asked for --
>> With FA off, your ship will not automatically increase back to the preset forward speed. Turn FA off and maneuver while holding the space bar. You could also rig up a bind to set the space bar to toggle the brake, so you don't even have to hold it. ::

"Oh, now I see what you mean. A toggle with FA off might help, I haven´t tried that. Without a toggle, it seems to stop working once you press too many buttons at once."

why the fuck would he want to use turbo anyway? he said nothing about locking the rotational axis of the ship.

To update this, I tried out holding the brake and then pressing movement keys. Holding the brake limits the max. speed to about 7m/s, so it doesn´t work like intended.

It won´t be an important feature, but one nice to have.

yun:

release brake
press directional key to go the way you want
apply brake

It's really NOT that difficult... though if you really, really want that automated for you, you can build a bind that will do it using +keydown toggles. See http://www.vo-wiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Binds for how.