What about armor?asked by MrMalZero
TL;DRA first version of armor is coming as part of engineering when it returns to PTU, and they say it will change combat balance and reward larger crews.
Well, yeah, it's coming too. Engineering's been on Tech Preview for a little while. It was on Tech Preview without armor when they had just finished the code check-in. I was talking to Torsten earlier today. When it returns to PTU, I think tomorrow or the day after, as soon as the build is where it needs to be, armor, the first version of armor, will be in as part of engineering. And it's going to dramatically change the balance between ballistics and lasers and all that stuff, different tiers of ships and everything. It's just fundamentally different how combat's going to play out. You're now going to have this choice: sure, I can use lasers if I want to peel down the shields and then melt the armor, or if I know where the shield generator is and I've got ballistics, I can punch right through that and take those out faster. It's going to be a really interesting challenge and change to combat. The more you know these ships, the more effective you're going to be. And then, of course, continuing changes to the flight model will make that better as time goes on.
It also massively benefits people actually taking larger crews, because if you're trying to fly on your own, you can't go around repairing all the components in the bigger ships. So it encourages you to actually go out with your friends, because you stay in the fight a bit longer. It's going to be a huge shift in the dynamic of the multi-crew ships.