I was recently playing an FPS game and comparing the combat to VO, but specifically movement and positioning. Obviously, walking has a parallel to normal flying and sprinting has a parallel to turbo, but VO doesn't have a parallel to a slide or dive. So my proposal is a new feature that, when triggered, acts as a burst of movement. I think this design space is pretty wide open, so below are some of my thoughts and considerations.

* What should the movement type be?

I think there are two types of movement that could make sense for VO. The first is a short distance teleport, i.e. when you trigger the addon, you near instantly 'jump' a few meters in the direction that you are thrusting in. To make it clear that the movement isn't lag, the ability would leave a trail of light and/or particles from the first point to the second point. From the point of view of the pilot that jumped, there's two options, first, a point of view slide from point A to B (a very fast camera pan basically) or a camera jump. The camera pan would make using it less disorienting, but maybe having the ability be somewhat disorienting could be a feature and add to the skill ceiling. In universe/lore, the ability could be called a micro jump generator, or micro warp generator.

The second movement type would be a burst of thrust, i.e. you activate the ability and some set amount of thrust gets added in the direction you are thrusting. I am imagining that this would let you exceed your max turbo thrust, but the deceleration would be like when you stop turboing and drop down to normal speed. I don't know what a good value would be, too low and the thrust wouldn't be significant burst of speed, but too high and it might let players exceed turbo speed too much. In universe/lore, the ability could be called a fuel injection, where you're basically dumping an extra explosive or energy into the system for a burst of speed.

* What resource should the speed burst consume?

Basically, should the speed burst require energy to use, require ammo to use, or just be on a cooldown. Having the ability use energy would add to the tradeoff of using it, since it could interfere with your turbo or weapons usage. It would also allow finer balancing of the ability, since you could have it be a flat amount or different amounts of energy for different tiers(the standard stuff), or a percentage of the current energy or reduce energy generation after use (new tweaks, I think). Having the ability use ammo could help balance the ability to prevent people from spamming it or prevent the ability from being too dominant. It could be combined ammo + energy as well. Finally, it could be include, or be solely on, a cooldown. Once again, if mixed with energy or ammo usage, a cooldown is both a balancing mechanism to prevent spamming the ability, but also a safety mechanism, so if someone hits a key too many times, it doesn't use the ability too quickly in succession. Alternatively, in a world where every ship had this ability, the cooldown could be a way to differentiate ship variants e.g. imagine a vulture where the ability had a 5 second cooldown, whereas the standard vulture had a 10 second cooldown. In universe/lore, a teleport seems more like an energy usage (powering up the micro jump generator), while a thrust burst seems more like ammo usage (throwing nitrous into the fuel).

* What form factor should the ability take?

If the ability was attached to an addon, then pilots would be trading firepower (or other utility) for mobility, which seems like a reasonable design consideration. There would also be the question of what size, small port or large port? Small port would make sense as a combat oriented device, but large port would make sense trader survivability device. There could also be room for both sizes, perhaps one could be ammo based and the other energy based, or teleport vs burst thrust, for differentiation in the market. Finally, there's the option of making the ability intrinsic to ship hulls. Every ship has a turbo, so maybe every ship has this ability as well, if the devs want to make piloting more dynamic in general. Or maybe the ability is only combat focused ships, or the high end variants, or maybe its only available on a rare mission ship similar to the Superlight.

I'm interested to hear others' questions and thoughts!

In what way would this enhance the game? It seems like it would make combat more difficult. What's the tradeoff?

I'm not wholly opposed to the idea of having a "sprint" feature for lateral/strafe movement like we have for turbo, that said it would have a huge impact on gameplay...

I like the idea but outside of having it implemented to specific ships that aren't yet in the game i'm gonna have to pass on it, the current controls/movement is satisfactory and don't need any extra bells'n'whistles as far as i'm concerned.

You're right, Whistler, an ability like this would make combat harder. I was mentioning all the different levers that could be pulled, but I think the most balanced form would be a thrust booster addon with a limiter number of uses. It would then provide a resource-limited mobility advantage, at the cost of firepower, similar to how flares provide a resource-limited damage advantage at the cost of weight and consistent firepower. When you're out of uses, you're down a addon slot, just like with ammo weapons.

Practical uses, I imagine there may be traders that opt to use it on their vessels to help them run away, or increase maneuverability with heavy loads. In combat, I see them as a good counter to missiles and flares, a few easy dodges, or a few flanking maneuvers.

It doesn't sound bad at first; the more speed and agility, the better. I've always dreamed of side and front turbos, but it doesn't have to happen, not by a long shot. I like the game as it is.
Well, I have no right to do anything other than watch this beautiful game and play it. I have complete faith in the vision of those who developed it.

My issue comes from the feasability of adding this feature - Where do you think such an action should be bound? On mobile? For controller and VR users?

I also don't think the teleport specific idea would be good - again, VR users

overall, an interesting thought experiment. I'm not sure if it really fits in VO though.

If the item were an addon, then binding it to a firing group would make sense.

a double tap of the strafe buttons would do it, seems a common implementation of dash mechanics, works on k/m, controller or touchscreen.

if they would give you any advantage in combat is debatable, a dash would be linear, which means from the point you start dashing your destination is not only pre-determined but also announced. I feel you would just end up dashing into a flare waiting for you.

this actually does sound like a neat idea, one that the ships weight should take into account obviously and it should have an energy cost , like 5% of your battery or something just so people arent spamming dodges and never being able to be hit

or a cooldown of a few seconds, which is what most shooters, rpg's and other games do