Richard Tyrer · Vehicle Feature Team

Yeah, so there is a time difference. It is ship based, but it can also be component based as well, because you've got the shields going up and down. Because we didn't want you to be able to press a button, boom, gone, and you're just in different modes. Because we want the player to make that key choice when they're in the master mode for combat, for example. We want them to be in that combat mode because they want to do that thing that they've chosen to do. But there's consequences to that. And it's the same with flying in navigation mode without the shields. There's a choice to that, that you can go fast and you're just doing your A to B stuff in Star Citizen and you don't want to get involved in combat. So there is that consequence: you can't just press a button and it's instant. So if you go from combat mode, for example, to navigation mode, your shields will have to go down. And then to go back, your shields will have to go back up. But it's not an instant thing. And it will vary depending on the components as well.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

That adds so much tactical choice though. Now during fights, when you're being raided by a pirate or whatever, it's not just flip a mode and get out. You have to determine when the best time is going to be. You have to know your ship and precisely how long it's going to take your ship versus their ship to make these switches. It opens up the door for tons of customization with the ships between the different components and the tunings, so that it's going to allow people to fine-tune their ships and have a reason to do so.

Richard Tyrer · Vehicle Feature Team

Yes. And that's the great thing about this, is it gives the player choice. That's something we're really keen for: we provide the underlying system, but we provide the choices within that as well. And that's really key for us as a gameplay team, is players have those choices. Because people play the game for all kinds of different reasons. Some people like to go out there with all guns blazing, for example. And they can do that. But if they do that, the other players are going to know that they're in that mode and they're all guns blazing. So it's a disadvantage to that, because they're going to be more aware that that person's in that mode.