Pretty much the m50 is "broken" in atmo not really due to bugs, but it's the aerodynamic design itself which is unstable and "broken" in a way. It's sort of a constant battle between gentle pitch and strafe inputs to keep the nose stable, but once you get used to it it's more or less habit. With the m50 you really need to continuously be using pitch/yaw and strafe up/down/left/right simultaneously to maneuver (and whenever possible, rolling into any turn to pitch instead of yaw). Coupled mode is going to screw this up, but in decoupled you can keep the ship pretty well balanced (at least, with analog pitch/strafe controls). In thicker atmo (like hurston, microtech, etc), once you approach top speed (3-400+m/s), you really want to make sure your nose and vector are aligned (within 10 or so degrees of pitch). I don't trust coupled mode at all, so I fly the m50 in decoupled, using a combination of strafe up & down and pitch up & down to keep it stable. Boost can really help with a turn, since that can almost double the strength of some of the mavs, which can break a "lock" from airflow. You can actually watch the IFCS trying to keep the m50 stable - if you see those nose thrusters blasting at full strength but you're still flying mostly straight, it means they're about to be overpowered by airflow (and are desperately trying to keep your nose down). The main thrusters on the M50 can push it to go fairly fast through atmo, but the maneuvering thrusters really struggle to help you pitch or yaw without control surfaces. The maneuvering thrusters on the m50 aren't very powerful relative to the mains (especially unboosted), so when pitching you get assistance from lift with the wings, there's basically nothing to help you yaw - as you yaw at speed, the drag pushes somewhat equally against the nose and tail and prevents you from yawing further. At the same time, in an atmo racing situation, you can use this instability/stall to get a powerful 180 degree flip, faster than your thrusters can rotate you - this is actually kind of a neat tactic to slow down and get your mains pointed in a different direction around a tight turn. The way to recover (if you have room or altitude) is to try to reduce the airflow pushing down on the top of the ship - by reducing speed or counterintuitively by strafing down (and possibly applying boost), then you can get the nose back aligned with your vector again. It's very easy to get "stuck" in that stall state where it feels like the m50 is trying to kill you by pitching up or down - if you are nose down and strafe up, imagine the airflow being like one hand pushing down on the nose and one on the tail at the same time, but because the nose is bigger that hand is pushing twice as hard. In the M50, it's set up almost like it has the tail in the front, so the aerodynamics are, instead of trying to stabilize you to fly forward, are trying to flip you around backwards. In a plane with a proper tail IRL (or a ship in SC like the razor, with the wings/tail at the back), as you pitch, the air/drag will push against the tail to stabilize you. The design of the ship is aerodynamically unbalanced - it has a huge nose and no tail to speak of (compare the m50's profile with the razor), so if your nose is pitched too far away from your travel vector (more than about 15-20 degrees if you're at top speed), the drag pushes HARD against the nose and will pitch you hard. It flies similarly in 3.17 to how it flies in 3.16 in atmo.
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