Twin-stick aiming in Orbit: aim freely, independent of flying. So far the ship’s nose always followed its flight direction, and weapons only hit what’s inside the aim cone in front of the nose. Anyone who wanted to keep an enemy off to the side had to fly straight at it.
- Controller: the right stick points where the nose looks, the left stick flies independently. Let go of it, and the nose goes back to following the flight direction.
- Mouse and keyboard: flying with WASD or the arrow keys means you aim with the mouse — for the rest of the run, so briefly letting go of the movement keys doesn’t send the ship flying toward the cursor. Mouse-only players notice nothing: they never press a movement key. And keyboard-only players won’t get a nose that stares at a motionless cursor — the mouse only counts once it’s actually been moved during the run.
- While aiming, the nose turns twice as fast as it does while flying (10 instead of 5 rad/s).
- Rolling adjusts itself accordingly: fly sideways while aiming and the ship still banks correctly from that lateral movement. It only leans into a turn while actually moving — turning the nose while standing still doesn’t cause a roll.
- Targeting modules are cheaper now: with free aim, you need them less often. Targeting Computer costs 1 token instead of 2, Omni-Targeting 2 instead of 3. They still widen the aim assist around whatever direction you’re pointing.
- Telemetry now tracks time spent using free aim, so it’ll be clear whether players actually adopt it — instead of repeating what happened with the jump.
- On phones, aiming by flying stays the default for now — a second stick on the right needs a new button layout.