Speaking of balance, why does CIG say they don't want a meta for ship balance, but they continue to nerf every ship outside of the Gladius and Arrow?

Well, I'm going to go nerf the Gladius and Arrow right now. But on a serious note, it's not our intention to look like we're just nerfing certain ships. But the balance of ships is quite complex, because there's everything we're trying to do. We're trying to build ships that work as fully functional ships. And even the shape of the ship defines a large portion of how well that ship performs in combat. So we've got a ship like the Arrow, for example, which is seen as an over-performer, but it's such a small ship. And its shape, which again goes back to the combat geometry at lower speeds: at the moment, with the combat we have, that nose-on-nose where you're aiming at such a small part of the ship, we want to change. So ships like the Arrow might actually lose some performance when we lower the speeds right down, because you'd be aiming more at the top or the bottom of the ship, where there's more surface area. But as far as not wanting a meta, all ships have a purpose. And then we've got a window where that ship operates, but I wouldn't say we're ever tying that ship specifically to that kind of meta. And that's what we mean. We can have a ship that is defined as a light fighter, but it doesn't mean we're just going to go, oh, well, it's a light fighter, we give it 50 points here, 50 points here, 50 points here, because it's a light fighter. And that's basically what we mean. That doesn't generate a meta. We want all these different factors that define what a ship is to matter in different ways. It's how all those different ways come together. And as I said before, it's a continuously moving target as well. So it's a challenge to get right.

Yeah, whoever asked that question must have forgotten about the time where we removed half the Arrow's shield generators. It was never supposed to have two. It was supposed to have one, but it had two for over a year. And there was a big outcry when we corrected that back to where it was supposed to be.

So it went from being the best, the really best, to just the best.

I wouldn't say it's even the best. It's certainly a strong choice, but there's definitely no protected ships in Star Citizen that get special treatment over the others. If something is way outside of its intended range, it will get looked at and sorted out one way or the other.