There are a few quite overgrown threads on this topic, so forgive me for not reading them all. I'm sure much of what I've written has already been said, but I'd like to present what I think would be a great system.

First, I'd like to say the current system is awful. A low thrust that doesn't take power and caps at 50-60, power eating straight-line turbo from which you are slowed down upon releasing? Seriously, for someone who actually understands physics a bit, this is a major letdown.

So this is what I think would be great:

Drop the speed cap (no, don't stop here, just keep reading :).
Let all thrusters consume power - the greater thrust, the more power needed. The maneuvering thrusters should have a fixed, low thrust, while the main thruster would be a boost-capable (just a plain old turbo). That means heavy ships would need to use different power cells then light ships. More powerful, but with greater velocity-degeneration factor (explained later). Because of inertia, ships wouldn't slow down when the thrust is gone (as it should be).

Another thing relates to the power cells. Currently, there is some "recharge rate", which is an awful description. It makes them look like an accumulators. That's not true, because they are power generators, which just 'by the way' carry a capacitor that stores excess energy. They should instead have something like a power output. That would make things like a constantly powered equipment more natural. (Imagine saying "attaching a radar extender slows your battery's recharge rate by 10". Wtf?)
Ok, so how does the cell generate the energy? Answer: drains it from the surrounding gravity field. The catch: the generator has to be stacionary relatively to the source of the field. When in motion, the power output degrades depending on some wacky equation.

So, here's the thing. Trader jumps into a sector, sees a pirate, turns and turbo's, spending all his energy. Next thought - "oh, crap.. no power". Now he can't slow down or rotate, let alone shoot, and is dead in space for about a half hour, before his cell recharges a bit. Pirate, with a light fighter, whose cell can survive higher velocity before becoming useless, catches up with him easily.

Immediate effect: Heavy trading ships need a fighter escort.

A side effect: Heavy ships, having a more powerful cell, can deal a lot more damage with it's weapons, thus balancing it's inability to run or maneuver.

Fighting in high speeds would be impossible, due to the power degradation. Still it would allow for a much more interesting fights IMHO. Rockets and missiles would have to be balanced a bit (as well as everything else), but I don't see a major problem with that.

So, that's just some of my ideas. Feel free to enumerate the reasons this wouldn't work (except "it would ruin fighting", you don't know that until you've tried ;)).

Ok, the speed cap was put in place for a reason: We used to have no speed cap, and pvp with ships wailing by eachother at insane speeds wasn't fun. Second. At higher speeds (300m/s+) lag can become a serious issue due to the way the client calculates where a ship will be based on current speed and the server telling it when that ship makes accelerations (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's the gist of the speed/lag issue)

Otherwise it looks OK, besides the high probability of being stuffed on the end of the 'todo list' that our devs have.. (They have hammered out how the engines worked and why (gameplay reasons) quite a long time ago, I recommend trying out that search function.

The flight model in VO is not remotely realistic, but it is central to the game and has not changed much in about a decade. A game with a realistic flight model would likely be very fun to play, but VO is not that game.

VO originally had a more realistic physics model, but since accelerating is free and the flight control model is so primitive, people ended up going way too fast to have anything like a real dogfight. This was deemed Not Fun, and instead of fixing the root issues, a velocity cap was imposed. Though not realistic, it does make for pretty interesting PVP, which is considered to be the strongest point of the game right now. As such, the dev team is (and should be) focusing their attention on other matters.

the only part of this thread i agree with is all these infiboost ships are kind of annoying it makes catching and killing a lot harder then it should be.

juryk, you are thinking only about reaction engines = rockets.

the game description talks about gravitic engines. That's why you don't need fuel nor propellant. Those exausts are not for propulsion, but for heat dissipation.

And since these engines "rides" on gravitic waves, they sometimes seems to violate inertial laws, but it does not. The price for engaging engine's turbo is losing gained speed when disengaging.

So, the physics simulation on VO is very good, but does not try to simulate reaction engines.

You don't read very well, do you Alloh?