Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

I joined in 2017, but gameplay since 2019, I think. I'm sure there are some things that are still the same, but I think details change over time a bit, right? Because sometimes you just prove that A or B doesn't really work. For example, also the idea to have a perfectly balanced game: sure, we can go for this, but it doesn't necessarily need to be that, because the relationships of players playing are so complex to grasp. The hardest case we have in our combat design is same skill, same pilot, same ship. To get a fight going the way we want in that scenario without any other external factors. When you get this one right, then you probably have something that you can really work with. But it's hard to actually get to that, because even if you have two really good pro players fighting against each other, it's hard to tell which one of these is better. I mean, you can maybe count kill times or so, but there's so many factors and that's sometimes hard to grasp. So I'm not entirely sure that we need a completely balanced game, because ships are different, like people are different, real-world airplanes are different, have pros and cons and so on, but you can never really balance them out completely, right? We'll see.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

You've just given people their first Reddit thread: "CIG developers: I'm not sure we need a completely balanced game."

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

Hang on. What we're still aiming for is we try to avoid a meta game. This is something we're still trying. It will be incredibly hard. If we have a game at some point where almost all ship types have a purpose, where it makes sense, also maybe in the value that you bought that ship for in an in-game shop or something like that, then we're probably in a good place.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Yeah, and it's one of those things: some ships are meant to have progression in mind. It's not that every ship is supposed to be equal. Some ships you're supposed to progress through. A Gladius is where the light fighter journey starts. It's not where your light fighter journey is supposed to end. So just by the very concept of progression, not all ships can be balanced, nor should they. There's supposed to be a 'you start here and you move here and you move here.' Now, that has changed quite a bit over the years and will continue to change as the game continues to develop.