Can somebody please explain to me the difference between shunting engines, correction engines, and thrusters on Space Engine ships?

There are 5 engine types in the .sss construction files, and only 3 displayed in the spacecraft screen, and one of those 3 don't even appear amongst the 5 that are in the .sss construction file….

I'm having a hell of a time getting my airplane-like shuttles to fly in atmosphere, as they all behave like rocks. They Will NOT respond to any stick inputs once I start forward flight, regardless of how much airspeed I put to them, in spite of me having the Aerodynamic's set to True. I'll have them at a significant Mach percentage, and yet full stick deflection yields zero results, no matter what the speed. I've programmed my joystick into the KEYS.CFG control file in every category from camera, to shipmovesXYZ, to rudder, aileron, and elevator deflection, yet it still has absolutely ZERO effect when I try to fly the danged things….

In addition, on takeoffs and landings, all ships will teeter delicately on hover engines for about a minutes worth of time before the osscillations grow too big and they just flip over, etc.

I've tried plugging all sorts of numbers into the CorrEngines to no avail, and there doesn't even seem to be any settings for aerodynamic surface effectiveness (which is ALWAYS Zero for me).

How can I make this work?
Thanks,

Could you share your model and everything, .sss file, and .cfg file?
I'm going to assume you tried increasing the acceleration values for your engines. As far as I know, aerodynamics simulation is very crude. Atmospheric pressure and density, gravity, these will affect the vehicle, so the behavior of the ship will vary depending on the planet.

These are those files you asked for;

************ CFG FILE FOR SPACEPLANE;

Unit     0.3049
Length   32
Material "aluminum"
Material "gunmetal"
Material "gunmetal_NONE"
Material "gunmetal"
Material "shttl_cargofloor"
Material "shuttle-LBD"
Material "shuttle-LBD_NONE"


EngineEffect "HVElectrajet_L"
{
Group    "Main"
Type     "Ion2"
Pos     (-4 0 7)
Rot     (0 0 0)
Size    (1 0.5 -15)
Color   (0.05 0.25 0.6)
}

EngineEffect "HVElectrajet_R"
{
Group    "Main"
Type     "Ion2"
Pos     (4 0 7)
Rot     (0 0 0)
Size    (1 0.5 -15)
Color   (0.05 0.25 0.6)
}




************  SSS FILE FOR SPACEPLANE;

Name    "shuttle-Skate"
Class   "Planetship"
Pack     "CSP"
Faction  "USNA"
Length   32
Offset  (0 0 0)
Quat    (1 0 0 0)
Mass     36000
Albedo   0.1
Exposure 1
Color   (1 1 1)
MainEngines  40
RetroEngines 0
HoverEngines 15
CorrEngines  0.5
TurnEngines  0.002
WarpBoostLog 0
Warpdrive    false
Aerodynamics true

Camera { "Behind" (0 4 40) (1 0 0 0)}
Camera { "Behind" (40 4 -4) (0.7071067811865475 0 0.7071067811865475 0)}
Camera { "Cockpit" (0 2 -16) (1 0 0 0)}

Module  "Main"  { "shuttle-Skate.cfg" (1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1) }






************ .SC FILE FOR PLANET - physical settings;


Planet "TerraNova (Tau Ceti 4B)"
{
ParentBody     "Poseidon (TauCeti 4)"
Class        "Terra"

Mass            0.593
Radius          4687
InertiaMoment   0.331861

Oblateness      0.005

RotationPeriod  24.433
RotationOffset  0
Obliquity       29.5
EqAscendNode    154.28
Precession      25592

AlbedoBond      0.306
AlbedoGeom      0.01
Brightness      1.4
Color          (0.579 0.611 0.703)

Life
{
Class   "Organic"
Type    "Multicellular"
Biome   "Marine/Terrestrial"
Panspermia "true"

.................


.SC FILE FOR PLANET - atmosphere settings;


.................



Atmosphere
{
Model          "Earth"
Height          60
Density         1.2929
Pressure        1
Greenhouse      33
Bright          9
Opacity         0
SkyLight        3
Hue             0
Saturation      1

Composition
{
N2    77.3674
O2    20.8625
Ar    1.3303
H2O    0.4
CO2    0.0398
}





I was hoping to be able to view and compare the settings for the CloseSpace Corp's "shuttle" as a performance analog for my own, but I can't seem to find it's .sss file or view it. I remember in the past it used to fly, well, at least "passably" okay, before recently becoming a rock like my current shuttles are now (meaning they've stopped flying as well).

The planet itself is just a copy of Earth, with a different surface skin. The atmosphere is copied directly from the Earth's .sc file, but with a 1% shift in the Nitrogen and Argon content levels. Gravity is basically earth normal.

Yes, I have played with and increased the numbers in the various engines, especially the CorrEngines, even though I don't know what they are or what they do (or what those elusive "shunt" engines are, that don't seem to appear anywhere, but are in tutorials).

I keep the TurnEngines low, because I want realistic gentle control of the ship while in space, and hopefully assume correctly, that they are irrelevant while in airplane mode atmospheric flight.

So, in summing up;
I want realistic maneuvering thruster control while in space, and good aerodynamic control while flying in air.

And separately, if possible, decent control of the ship while hovering.

But I don't understand the various engine categories provided,  or why the Aerodynamics aren't working.

Let me know if I've provided enough….

Thanks;

Sorry for the wait.
the .sss files for distributed models are in the SpaceEngine\data\models\spacecraft\ShipsModels.pak file, in a default subfolder you'll find Shuttle.sss and Skylone.sss
What I don't see in your .sss file is an explicit declaration of the amospheric flight model, in case of a shuttle:
AeroModel "shuttle". The other existing flight model as far as I know is "arrow", with no control surfaces.
That parameter is used in the Shuttle.sss file in addition to the Aerodinamics   true parameter mentioned in the SpaceEngine manual. According said manual, setting Aerodinamics  true should be enough to enable atmospheric flight, but I would try anyway. Also, I would try and change Class parameter to "Shuttle" instead of "Planetship". If you would like to have an all-purpose vehicle, you could always set Warpdrive to true.