The questions on the flight model have been slowly cleared up in recent months. When this was all still in the early stages, and planning, it was clear that the fans wanted a full, no air-resistance flight model. This would be a model like those on the show, thrusting in the direction needed for a short amount of time. Past expereience in these games would show us a game that was like flying in atmosphere, which space definately is not. However, for newer players which did not want the kind of realism and high level of difficulty, it was clear that a simple, more atmospheric like flight model was needed.

Sierra's Dan Foy commented early on in the game's development:

     I just wanted to assure you that we are not going to abandon a sophisticated interface for flying a Starfury in a realistic manner.  Our plans for the flight controls have been very similar to what you have suggested, that is, a default "travel in the direction you're facing" mode.  As you have said, this makes it intuitive for beginners.  And you will be able to toggle the "airplane" mode on and off at will for the times when you want to take advantage of everything the Starfury is capable of doing.

      This also allows the player to learn the advanced features at his/her own pace. We have a design philosophy for this game to allow the player to "learn as you go" as much as possible  (And not just the flight mechanics, either).

And Marc Hudgins had this to add:

      Gameplay is always king, and in the end, our decisions are based on the premise of "is it fun?". This means fun in a lot of different ways. We recognize the enormous desire to have the ability to fly this thing "correctly" and we will implement a control scheme to allow that, including player-configurable control set-ups. By doing that, we hope to make it "fun" for a certain portion of the players. We also recognize that not everyone is so enamored of a "real" flight model and will want a simple, easy to comprehend flight model. We are developing this game to allow for that as well. We want to alienate as few people as possible. This game is going to work on a lot of different levels, not just in terms of its flight model. Most people don't really see it yet, but have faith. I think everyone will be quite pleased once this game is in their hands.

     Remeber that these were written early on in the game's development (around early-1998). A long way has been made since then. You can view the latest control configuration the developers have come up with by going to our controls page.

We are very aware that there are reasons to allow "continuous acceleration" in inertial mode (you gave some good ones) and reasons not to. (Enemies escaping, "wooshing" through blockades, etc.) It is really going to come down to a playtest/game balance issue. We'll bring this issue up when we are at that stage.

A fundamental goal is to design a system which avoids the whole "tracking fuel consumption" chore while still maintaining the feel of limited resources. If you can accelerate continuously while you have O2, then the percieved limitation goes away. Granted, there will be times that you want to "go faster"; we have a couple of ideas for dealing with this...
--John Walker, 6.13.99

Here's an excerpt from Grinner's Report to Sierra (7.6.99):

Overall, I was really impressed. The flight model is very realistic. Don't try to make a hard turn when you're close to a capital ship or station and are trying to avoid it. Chances are, you can't, because when you make the hard turn, you don't stop on a dime. The thrusters still have to fire for a certain amount of time before you are going in your new direction. In the end, you're slamming into the object sideways.

Hopping into inertial mode is one of the greatest aspects of the game. The computer will not compensate for your current vector, so you can hit the space bar, turn the ship down, and be able to fire into at the passing object while still moving perpendicular to the object. This is more advanced than the WC auto slide in the fact that you can still maneuver using the controls on the hat and the page up and page down keys on the keyboard. These controls are a bit dull and not very strong. I asked the developers about this, and was told that it was made for fine touch maneuvering.

Mara Jade came up with a brief lecture on inertial flight models (for those that have no idea what it is):

Situation: Your Starfury is stopped motionless in space at a fixed location. Your Throttle operates not like a constant thrust, more like a power 'burst'. (Hence, a throttle might not be appropriate in this game...) To move forward, you would give the 'throttle' a rearward burst of power, the bigger the faster. The 'throttle' would always return to zero power. (Try to imagine this as a stereo receiver. As it displays the musical tones of a song, the bar graph rises and falls to the length and intensity of the tone.) Thus, you are in a forward motion. To accelerate, you just apply subsequent bursts of power in the same direction. At this point you may wonder why I am repeating this. Hold on, I'll get to the comparison part in a minute... Once you have established this forward momentum, to come to a stop, you would need to fire the forward thrusters, or spin around, and fire the rear thrusters again. (The Starfury's have supplied enough thrusters, that all of this is perfectly within bounds.)

Gameplay of this kind is more a slight modification to the player's thinking, than it is to the 'default' game engine. Here's a few changes that you'll would spot immediately...

The 'turn' would no longer be a combination of forward and 'new direction' momentum. It would be solely a point-rotation type motion. The turn would simply be a spin-- unless multiple thrusters are fired simultaneously! (I don't want to even get into the complexities of that!) In other words, once you establish a direction of motion, and are continuing in that motion, a 'turn' will only change your direction of view, not direction of motion.