With physicalized damage coming in at some later date, does that effectively nullify data collected now, prior to its implementation?
TL;DRNo, the collected data stays useful because ship balance shouldn't change dramatically, though gameplay may shift since physicalized damage lets ships be disabled in varied ways rather than just destroyed.
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.