Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

Well, it still boils down to this: if somebody wants to escape and he has the better equipment to do that and he has more experience and skill, then that ship might escape. But if you want to work as a bounty hunter, you are reliant on having very dedicated equipment anyway. One of the things we're thinking about here is the importance of distortion weapons. Since the quantum drive is the thing that allows the speed advantages in NAV mode, we're thinking about making the quantum drive, for example, very susceptible to distortion damage. But being susceptible to distortion damage means that the attacker needs to bring either an EMP device, or swap out some of their hardpoints for distortion weapons. And distortion weapons are always going to be less effective in taking down shields. In fact, in 3.21, we actually did a pretty big change to the distortion system so that shields are very resistant against distortion damage, so you need to bring energy weapons to actually bring them down. Again, it goes a little bit more in the direction of, as a player, you're being forced to bring specialized equipment. But if you have specialized equipment, then you are absolutely still able to do your bounty hunting stuff. Part of the equation is how big are the ships that you can trap and snare, right? But that's also something we have yet to answer internally, because there are some situations where, oh, there's a tiny little ship, why can I not jump away with my 890, right?

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And it's not a discussion that is exclusively for you and your team. It will also involve gameplay designers. The people who are assigned to build out the bounty hunting career will obviously have a say in that kind of stuff and what kind of tools and methods we can make available to them to work within the master modes system. The bounty hunter dream is core. It's one of those core things. We've talked about it forever. It's something CR is very, very interested in and always has been. So while we may not have specific answers or details for it now, when it comes time for bounty hunter V2 or whatever version we're on, you can expect to learn more information about it when that time comes.