Thank you for replying to my rant. But my feelings are genuine and the situation is real. I had to log in to a new account because stardock has a limit on replies from a initial account, which I made only because of this issue.
I bought the game on initial release. At this time, after taking your finger off the acceleration key, the ship would coast forward for about thirty seconds or even more before slowing down to a near stop. HOWEVER, it would continue to coast forward, like a car going into neutral. Yes, it would slow down, but GRADUALLY, very very incrementally.
NOW, on v1.3, the spaceship stops dead the very instant that I take my finger off the button. This is completely unimmersive. The whole point of the gradual zoom into the different planets as you approach them is to appreciate the starcontrol universe. Now, if my ship can only go 100% or 0% and nothing in between, I'm stuck at the broader view of the solar system, and never get the gradual zoom in feature, which I thought was super cool.
This spoils everything. Ships should continue to move in space after the engines turn off. STARCON used to do the right thing.
SUGGESTION: give a gameplay option to allow the ship to coast forward. PLEASE.