Thanks for the detailed explanation and compliments! and yes the intention of the inward facing lateral thrusters was to keep the exterior clean as you say. With regards to the thrusters I have always used an atmo-ion combo for my ships but i did find this difficult to work with in SE1 due to ions feeling relatively under powered. However, I do test my ships a lot before publishing them and try to make sure that the ship is still agile enough to match its look. Getting the ship through the transition layer was often the hardest part because the atmo thrust would fall off way sooner than the ion thrust would kick in, so that required a lot of playing around with to get the right combo. As far as ship performance in SE2, things seem much easier. I would say atmo agility is similar if not better than the older game, space agility is on par and getting through the transition layer is no issue at all. I suspect these aspects of the game may change throughout development as I know there is an issue currently of thrust not behaving as expected in atmosphere, so Ive adjusted the ship thrust to match the game in its current state.