My org has been rigorously testing, arranging org v org battles, and engaging in open Persistent Universe combat at scale (teams of 3 or more capitals each side) regularly for most of 2025. We own the world's first Wikelo Polaris and Idris, and have an undefeated record against all PvP orgs traditionally considered peers. In short, we kind of play this capital combat thing a bit. We've also had a lot of fun with it, up until now. This is our take on Engineering in 4.5 and our requests for how to improve it. Please keep in mind this pertains specifically to CAPITAL-LEVEL COMBAT, meaning only the Idris and Polaris (and mostly the Idris, as it's the most powerful, and therefore used the most), in a multiple-ship, multi-crew context. What we discuss here will have little relevance to the "solo cap" experience. First, some general game issues that affect capital combat in very bad ways: Disappearance of names from party markers (is a new FPS HUD on the way?) Disappearance of ship radar/HUD contacts The "Audio Bug," which we understand is being worked on - this can't come soon enough Multiple crashes to desktop, every 5-10 minutes for some users Hit registration (or its appearance), particularly on the Exodus beam, where damage doesn't seem to apply, or is hitting invisible barriers on targets. Desync in ship messages - If you crash and log back in, and a powerplant overload is in progress, the ship gives you no warning about it! Regarding Repair The biggest core issue with repair is that it frequently devolves to a couple people beaming a repair tool at an object, while someone outside constantly shoots at that object. It's an absurd game of puppyguarding. The most obvious example of this is... Idris Main Gun repair is bad in two ways 1) You can repair it instantly (maximum of only a tiny amount of hitpoints) and start using it again. 2) From its tiny amount of repaired hitpoints, it can instantly be killed again by anything. The main gun needs to both require a larger, more deliberate effort to repair, but also reward this by having the weapon up again at full health when complete, without an opponent being able to "camp" it. Fleet combat can currently devolve into a battle to disable guns rather than ships. Power Plant repair is bad in the same ways Tiny amounts of repair flicking it on, and small bits of damage flicking it off. There need to be more defined off/repairing/on periods. SRT Canisters are frustrating SRT canisters should behave like ammo, drawing from backpack, and discarding to the ground on reload. Currently SRT Canisters will only reload from torso (not backpack). They also go back to the torso when empty. Regarding Ship Fire/Disabling/Destruction All of these elements are fascinating and have huge fun potential, but need a little more thought. When applied to the order-of-magnitude higher shield/hull hitpoints of capital ships, they don't function in a great way. Fire is negated/life support is ignored too easily Running the ship properly vented/with no life support really doesn't seem to come with any downsides at present, and protects you totally from any fire risks. One way to address this could be tying gravity to life support, requiring that system to be online to facilitate easy movement around the ship. Fire itself doesn't seem to happen very often even on ships that are not vented In a recent extended battle (3+ hours) involving two teams of four heavily-crewed Idrises, only two fires were known to have broken out. I recall that this was drastically reduced during the holiday break and may be coming back, but it's worth mentioning, because this should be a big part of running a big ship. On the Idris, self destruct is not displayed on the engineering terminals Just like power plant overload is supposed to be (see the bug above where it sometimes isn't!), self destruct should be alarmed and visible ship-wise - particularly on status screens. The "post-hull" HP buffer needs to go. There is no point to hull damage once you have initially reduced armor and hull HP/Damage does not pass through to components after the initial drop to 0 hull HP. The "buffer" hitpoints that take over once the main ship armor and hitpoints have been reduced should NEVER reset to full again under any circumstances. In fact, probably the best way to handle this is to stop trying to obfuscate it and just...increase the main hull hitpoints to what you think it should take to fully destroy the ship. That's your buffer. That's the crew's extra timer to get components repaired and get it flying again. It can be a lot (2x is reasonable, 10x, it should hopefully be obvious, is not) Because while I know you don't want it to come down to a health bar, it definitely makes no sense that you can dump obscene amounts of fire into the hull, and one dweeb with a multitool can reset all the damage you've done. It has to be possible to cross a hard "this ship is toast" line even without camping the power plant rolling chances for it to go critical, which is... Rolling for chances to make a powerplant go critical is stupid (as the sole way to kill a ship from the outside). I understand what you were going for here, and while I don't actually hate it in and of itself, the reality of the unkillable hull makes this extremely frustrating, because your options become this, or boarding the ship, and that's all. I should want to board a ship and self destruct it because that's the fastest way, not because any other ways are literally impossible or RNG. Regarding Weapon Balance/Usage I acknowledge most of this is just balance and will gradually make its way around, but it's where we are now. Distortion seems to have no purpose in capital fights. While the previous iteration was a little excessive (a disabled Idris power plant in 4.4 would be off for over 17 minutes), in 4.5 distortion is way too unforgiving. Not only is distortion recovery faster, but shutdown recovery isn't much longer than just having to repair a disabled power plant. Maybe this is intended? It certainly doesn't give one much reason to use distortion over penetrating weapons. Energy damage seems to have little purpose in capital fights. None of the S5 and below energy weapons seem to have the penetration to be of use on large targets (Idris). CAVEAT: combined with the changes recommended above, there is a danger of energy, particular beams, becoming highly favored for full ship kills compared to the lower overall DPS output of the railgun - this was our entire strategy in 4.4 and prior, and it was disgusting. The railgun is currently king because of its penetrative hit-anywhere potential, and the beam falls behind because after the hull HP is down, it's all but useless for anything more than "tickling" components you can't target with any precision through hitreg issues. Ballistics (Deadbolts specifically) are the only weapons worth equipping on capital turrets for a capital fight. With no damage passthrough after the initial drop to 0 armor and hull HP, and insufficient penetration to reliably reach component targets, there's nothing worth using against an Idris but the Deadbolt. Torpedoes fail too frequently and do too little damage to the Idris to be worth it. It takes eight Vanquisher X-CS torpedoes (ostensibly having made it past countermeasures, PDC, and gunner fire) to reduce an Idris' armor to 0%. This lands the hull HP at approximately 59%. The first four torpedoes affect primarily armor, doing only 1-4% hull HP each - showing that the armor does in fact reduce their damage. Component damage is rare (only one in eight torpdoes cause any) and does not fully disable. It's not to say the Polaris is useless in capital fights, but it certainly doesn't shine, and a crew on a Polaris would be better used on another Idris instead. Bombs are weird. Strangely, bombs (which aren't meant to be used in space at all) present a very unlikely, very high risk, very high reward option that...maybe they should/shouldn't? Currently you can kill all crew onboard an Idris with any size bomb. Gameplay Requests from the Crews I polled all of our members for their top wishes: (Repeated from above for emphasis) SRT canisters should behave like ammo, drawing from backpack, and discarding to the ground on reload. Currently SRT Canisters will only reload from torso (not backpack). They also go back to the torso when empty. Fuse failures need better visual indicators (several crew reported that the Engineering terminal was unreliable, and some broken fuses failed to display). Could use internal waypoints (similar to the ones marking elevator/door buttons) directing the player to broken fuses and components. More engineering terminals (or passive "read only" displays) are needed on larger ships to help crews keep aware of what's broken and where they might be needed. Maximum SCM/Nav speeds should be reduced with each physical engine lost. This could be as minimal as a 30% overall reduction with all engines removed - but enough to allow pursuit to stay with them. Currently capital ships can still "disengage" in nav mode even when most or all of their engines have been removed. Boarding should be better facilitated by increased EVA speeds/better EVA control, better tractor beam latching with a higher speed threshold, or both. Target capital ships do not slow down well enough even when disabled to make this a great option. The Idris in particular has a very large number of faulty collisions inside (evidenced on video in https://issue-council.robertsspaceindustries.com/projects/STAR-CITIZEN/issues/STARC-172029). Power management behaves strangely or resets to defaults entirely when power segments become unavailable (for example due to blown fuses or reduced power plant output). This needs to be polished for a more intuitive experience. If anyone has IC reports that address any of these specific concerns, please reply with them! I haven't had time to do the hunting myself.