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Fun to fly manually. I fly a vaga during the test fight ... maybe should have flown a frigate because the cruiser felt very clunky and big. I assume this is the point of course.

Considerations/ideas to make manual flying more intuitive

I) When I zoomed out I found it really difficult to identify which direction I was really going in. I knew the general direction, but to orbit the pos tower when we were shooting it while keeping an eye on the blob at the warp it and what was around me was tough. Could I propose some function to allow a pilot to know his/her vector when zoomed out? Even if it is a giant arrow :)

II) Setting up my W, A, S, D keys I soon discovered you cannot do a loop the loop!!! For example, if you press and hold W (assume you have set this to down) your ship will move until it is 180 degrees down. Of course there is no down in space, by i assume you know what i mean. I was assuming if you held W you would come back around and head up, but this does not happen. Could this function be added? Similarly, pressure S (assuming it is bound to up) should intuitively allow me to loop around and go back down. A little like hold back on a planes control stick

III) It is early days at the moment, but is there a possibility of binding a key to stop thrust but still allow you vessel to move, a drift key of sorts. For example, assuming i am on a vector at a constant speed. I want to hold my current speed but turn my ship. So my ship is orientating with the nose turning but the vessel is still moving on its aforementioned vector. Then, on releasing the drift key thrust is applied in the direction your vessel is pointed with all the relevant agility and inertia calculations applied. This is just a thought but might make practical piloting more interesting.

The manual piloting was really a blast and far more immersive than the current mean of control on TQ.
I'm like Steve Atreides, for all the point that could be improved but all in all that was pretty cool

The last paragraph "A La" Colonial Vipers in Battlestar Gallactica turning to fire while your on you current Vector :D

Works as described, interesting difference in feel between frigs and battlecruisers.

So it's pretty cool, and fun for a few minutes... but what's the functional purpose for it in the game?
Dog-fighting? In space? With ships that should have tracking technologies that make it irrelevant?

Is there a plan to radically change the game mechanics into a flight sim?

Is anyone really going to use this in PvP? If so, I want to fight them, because good luck keeping at optimal range on someone.

I understand the need to make the game more desirable to newer players, I get that, all companies want / need to grow. What I don't get is how you (CCP) are going about it.

Part of the appeal of EVE is that it is different than all the other games out there. Why do things to make it more like the other games?

Besides, as someone else stated, why are you doing things to attract new players, but not doing anything to address the tons of issues that already exist? Why isn't there more effort to repay the loyalty of long time supporters and customers?

While the Fight yesterday it was not possible for me to maneuver with the WASD keys, but that can be because of my low-end machine, my FPS was about 3-5... All the other time it was ok, but imho low-responsing, even with a frigate...

An follow-camera mode would be nice here too...

But for me I will use the standard controls, like approach, orbit, keep in range, etc... Direct Control makes no sense for me...

I tried your new fangled ‘twitch based’ flying last evening and I must say I came away disappointed.

My first thoughts when I finally got the keys bound was to try docking, now I can dock anything but this was really disappointing. I set my ship to warp to a station and exit at 10 Km, so far so good, I engaged docking thrusters, and tried calling the station for docking permission. Nothing, no reply at all, so I set course for the docking aperture, no ‘green lights’, no rotating station, no ‘Blue Danube’ playing, come on CCP this is 2014 not the late 70’s

The above is all said in jest, but I really do think you have opened a ‘can of worms’ with this change, we already have the ‘twitch’ brigade asking for joystick control, button push to target, and such like. Although on the surface it might look a good idea, just be very careful what you wish for it may just came back and bite you in a very tender place.

I can't help but notice that my big heavy Vindicator turns much faster under manual control than it does when I let the navigation computer handle it (that is, by using the conventional means).

Someone else commented to me that they tried manual control of a Titan and that it felt absurd - like there was no way that the Titan should be able to avoid snapping in two with the manual turning speed.

Although I wholeheartedly agree that this should go forward and has plenty of uses (some more productive than others) in EVE, the turning speed should be adjusted to match what you'd get under normal behavior - unless of course there's some reason you have in mind why manual turns should be faster on our end than conventional navigation-controlled turns.

your ship's direction and its flight vector are two different things

Maybe some smoothing of acceleration of turning of capitals would be ok. Freighters included.

If its less of a turn based game in terms of ship control.... does that have any implications for valkyrie integration further down the line??