this is not a brawler vs sniper thread. e.g. I think an increase in speed could make sniping more fun also. get with the program; more agile flying is more fun flying in our opinion. this opinion is of course supported with our correlating the lack of player retention with the lack of fun/speed
I'd just like to pop in and say that correlation does not imply causation.
Early in the game's life when the ships were more responsive, much of the playerbase had spent quite a bit of money on Guns of Icarus (Kickstarter, buying full price, buying for 10 dollars). It was around the April 30th patch when GoI started going for about 5 dollars. Of course, if you pay more money for a game, you're going want to keep playing it to get your money's worth. If you pay less money, you're more likely to just throw it away after playing a couple of hours. Concluding that player retention went down because of lower ship movement is just....silly.
tl;dr: Ship speed and player retention are not necessarily correlated. Personally, I don't think they're correlated at all.
I'm not as experienced as other people in this thread. But faster ships doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is going to be happy. Some captains might like the speed boost, but what about everyone else on the ship? What about the hades gunner that can't hit enemy ships at all because they keep juking the shots? What about mid-range combat? Ships will be able to close distance faster, giving mid-range guns a smaller window of effectiveness. Pilots aren't the only people playing this game. Engineers and gunners exist, and increasing ship speed won't necessarily make the game more fun for them.
The game is in a good spot right now in terms of balance and funness. Increasing ship speed can ruin it.