What is the most user friendly snub, ever?

[Blodo]

In short: as long as you don't fly in cockpit view and found a use for the roll(which the game punishs you for) the Z axis is useless, shamefully this is a very common errorr in perception ( yes i am looking at you dear devs ) - though Ursus tested it by modifying the files to find out 100% for sure how it works - and it works in the way i explained.

Actually this is not true at all. Freelancer ships roll by themselves due to the way mouse flight works. Try specifically leaving your mouse just below of the top right corner for one test: if no roll occured then after a few 360 degrees iterations the ship would be still back in the same position it was. However a roll does occur, and this is even more pronounced for ships that have a high roll (torque/inertia) and bank angle stat. My personal theory for it is that the angle bank occurs but is never reversed as the ship's orientation does not move strictly along the x or y plane. I've never tested this on a ship with max bank angle of 0, but nonetheless the speed of the bank depends on the roll acceleration stat as you'd expect.

So in that respect roll actually does matter in fights because it affects the ship's final orientation, which will have a differing impact depending on the ship's shape. A combination of high max bank angle and fast roll on a flat ship means that the ship might be trickier to hit than it would otherwise be, as you wouldn't be able to just sit with a view of his top, since you would no longer face his top the moment he started turning. Admittedly not many ships at the moment actually use these stats to such dramatic effects, but nonetheless they do make a noticeable difference for high skill fights.