The 300i should now be performing as intended thanks to COMSTAB fixes.
The Star Citizen Arena Commander v0.9.1.1 patch has been deployed and it mainly affects 300i pilots with what’s known as Command Stability (COMSTAB) Refinement. This will actually affect a lot of players because it’s one of the most basic ship that was passed on to backers. Along with the flight performance fix, leaderboards will now ignore private matches.
In other news, the monthly report has been posted with details on progress from all the dev teams involved.
Here’s your notes:
Leaderboard Update
- Private matches will no longer count on the leaderboards. You can now dogfight with your friends and not have stats reported. Allowing you to experiment with different strategies and keep them secret!
Command Stability (COMSTAB) Refinement
- We fixed an issue with COMSTAB that seemed to impact the 300i more so than the other ships; 300is should be back to fighting form!
What is COMSTAB?
Also known as Command Stability, COMSTAB an IFCS mode that attempts to guarantee that any high level command is carried out in a stable, controlled manner. Think the future equivalent of modern ‘fly by wire’ aircraft controls. It was originally intended to be a more generic concept, but has become synonymous with turn control or anti-slide, and has sometimes been referred to as TCS (Turn Control System).
As currently implemented, COMSTAB will automatically decrease the forward velocity of the ship in order to deliver a controlled pitching or yawing turn with minimal slide. Because a ship’s ability to slow depends on the strength of its retro thrusters, which, under damage conditions, may be unreliable, COMSTAB will also limit the turn rate to one that can be sustained at the true current forward velocity. As a result, as you request a turn, the ship will begin to slow, increasing its turn rate as it approaches its sustained turning velocity. You can still improve your ship’s turn rate manually by throttling back yourself, or by momentarily increasing your ship’s thrust with Boost. WhenCOMSTAB is enabled, pitching and yawing will result in a controlled turn, while without COMSTAB, depending on the forward velocity and turn rate, the result may be more of a spin than a turn. It is still possible to sustain a controlled turn without COMSTAB, but it is up to the pilot to balance the turn rate and forward velocity manually.
Note that with COMSTAB now properly enabled, your ships may seem more sluggish to turn. This is the system doing its job correctly! This allows for minimal drifting at the expense of turn rate. You can counteract this by boosting to supply more power to your thrusters, throttling down, or just turn the COMSTAB system off altogether. If you’d like more individualized control (or feel like you can squeeze more maneuverability out of your ship) you can disable COMSTAB. Just cycle through IFCS modes with CTRL+CAPSLOCK!
Remember: ships aren’t meant to be flown with throttle maxed all of the time. This would be akin to one driving their car 90 miles an hour on winding city streets. One can’t expecting their vehicle to handle at its fullest under those conditions, and space ships are no different!
COMSTAB is an important part of our flight mechanics and we want to get it right. Future patches will address balancing and other fixes for Arena Commander as our team constantly looks to improve the Star Citizen experience. Thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm for Star Citizen and we look forward to your feedback!
One downside of this update for me has been constant crashing mid-combat which is not an issue I have experience at all since Arena Commander launched. I’ve yet to find the cause of this but it’s damn annoying.
The patch will automatically update with the launcher.
Source: RSI
