John Crewe · Vehicle Director

It's a very hard question to answer because there are so many systems at play there, even with those two examples of an Idris and a Constellation. If the Idris hits you with that railgun fully charged out of the gate, it's going to be seconds. If they miss, then it's going to be much longer. But as a general, broad, extremely broad... don't hold me to this in many patches' time. It is not going to be the short 10 to 15 seconds that we can experience now in those scenarios where it's over before you know it. And if you get two good players together, they might stretch to a minute or two dogfighting. It is going to be longer than that. But whilst it might take a greater time, the actual combat within that time will be a much more intense and exciting thing.

Ben Curtis · Vehicle Art Director and Weapons Art Director

I think, obviously this is really one for John to answer, but from my point of view, player skill is going to play a massive part in it. Like you just said. I'm an old World of Warcraft player, and some of the boss fights there can take a decent amount of time, but by the time you get it down, you know exactly what you're doing. You can speed run most things. It's going to be really exciting when we get all these systems on and you can actually have a group conflict with your mates. I always like playing a bit of the underdog, trying to take out some of these big mean capital ships. It's going to be awesome.

John Crewe · Vehicle Director

The combat now is definitely not how it's going to be, not even in the next few patches, let alone with physical damage, because the combat till then is very much time to kill. The outcome of combat is somebody explodes every single time, and that's the only outcome there is at the moment. And the chance of that happening with physical damage is radically reduced, because that's only going to happen if you do a critical hit to their power plant and it explodes. You're much more likely to then have a disabled ship that either needs boarding or salvaging or tractor beaming away. And then on the flip side of that, it's you in your disabled ship figuring out what you are now going to do as a result of your ship's damage, because previously you'd just be dead and there's no choice there. But do you stay with your wreck? Do you fight off the attackers? Do you hide on board your ship and hope they don't come and find you? Do you call for backup? It's just going to change everything.

Ben Curtis · Vehicle Art Director and Weapons Art Director

I think physical damage for me is really exciting but also really scary, because from an art point of view, the way we make our ships has a real impact on their performance. And yes, we will be balancing things with the materials used, and that will be how we balance the ships out. But we always get a little bit of stick for, oh, there's a big empty bit of space behind this wall, and that sort of stuff. And it's like, well, that might not necessarily be such a bad thing when you get to proper hull thicknesses and physical damage. Having all your main systems just exposed across the main core of the ship and being there ripe for the picking, versus having them nicely tucked away in the belly of the ship, can make a big difference to the way the ships are going to behave and how combat is going to feel. It's super exciting but a little bit scary.

John Crewe · Vehicle Director

There are a lot of content changes that will be done to support it. And even if it was just a behind-the-scenes data change, it's a big change. But the content side just makes it this huge, huge thing.