A player asks whether armor will be in place for the first Engineering T1 release, whether the fuse rework is planned for that release, whether Engineering-ready ships will be updated patch by patch or all at once, and whether a design brief is planned.asked by xavol

Hi

Before I answer your question want to use the opportunity and thank all for all the videos, feedback and discussions around the gameplay. It already helps us tremendously to improve the feature.
Not as fast as I and probably you like, but it is important for us that we set a good base to build on.

To your questions:

I cannot promise anything here sadly. We are currently focusing on getting the "flow" right. Means damage, fire and repair is our main focus to get a nice mix of good gameplay and fullfilling the Star Citizen Fantasy. So until we are "happy enough" we wont add anything new to the mix. Reason is we really need to focus on as few things as possible to not "water down" the feedback.
Thank you for asking that since I saw already some posts and IC reports around it. So let me clarify. (Trying to do a TLDR version here) Also what you see here is what we want to go forward with.
Relay rework clarification
Relays are still the connectors of all ship components, but if you lose all the fuses inside items will not lose the connection anymore. The reason here is that some ships are just build in a way that the relay that connects all items or is critical are just too easy of a target. Hence we did decide to rework the system.
What happens now is that each relay has still fuses inside. Once all fuses are destroyed or depleted, the relay will go into a "red" state.
The "red" state of the relay means that it will block some power.
This means:
If you have lost a relay (by it not having any fuses anymore) the available power in the ship will drop.
Depending on the ship size and the amount of relays present that can have a significant impact on your ship. So they are still an important factor to be taken care of.

3. Yes, patch by patch.

Cheers,