Sean Tracy · Technical Director of Content

Not at all, because the balance for the ships is still not going to be so dissimilar when physically-based damage comes online. They'll just be more within the role that they're meant to be. Will it affect Theaters? To a degree, yeah. But will it massively change the balance? We don't want it to. The gameplay, though, might shift, because, again, physically-based damage is not the opposite, but it's different than what we have right now, because right now it's just a big health pool on a ship, right? Each component has a certain amount of health or whatnot. So instead, you're not shooting a ship until it explodes, basically. You're going to be shooting a ship until it's disabled in some way, and whether it explodes will be a systemic part of that. If you've damaged the power plant and the power plant goes critical and then the ship explodes, great. But physical damage is meant to give a range of ways to disable the ship, I guess, rather than just blowing it up, if that makes any sense. And it's more like what it would be like in reality, I suppose. Sure, if you fire a couple missiles at a jet, it will explode, but maybe it explodes on the wing, maybe it explodes on the back. It's going to go differently, rather than the thing just being vaporized within a second and then that's job done. It's going to go very differently in that sense. But the, I don't want to say the meta, but the main balance for that given ship should not change dramatically. That's all.