EDIT: read my update in the comments. The shield HP values in TP3 are bugged. When testing with the intended values it feels very good. Exciting stuff. Fighter v fighter combat in Star Citizen is currently in a poor state on LIVE, and the changes being tested in the TECH PREVIEW risk making several of the existing problems substantially worse. The combination of high TTK, slow weapon speeds, and the current ballistic meta has already made fighter combat less responsive and less rewarding, while the TECH PREVIEW’s decision to double shield health and further increase TTK risks pushing the combat model even further from its original design. The basic flight profiles of fighters were built around an approximately four second static TTK between two Glads. That baseline is important because fighter maneuverability, acceleration, nav spooling, and defensive capabilities were designed around the expectation that gaining a positional advantage would allow a pilot to inflict meaningful damage within a relatively short period of time. With today’s much longer TTK, that relationship has been weakened. A pilot can successfully outmaneuver an opponent, maintain a firing solution, and land shots without those actions producing a meaningful result for a disproportionately long period of time. The already slow weapon speeds compound this problem. Landing shots requires more prediction and creates fewer opportunities to capitalize on brief positional advantages. When that is combined with significantly higher survivability, fights can become drawn out exchanges where maintaining a firing solution matters less because the resulting damage takes so long to translate into an actual threat. The ballistic meta further undermines shields as a meaningful defensive layer. Ballistic weapons can continue dealing hull damage without having to remove the entire shield pool first. This means that increasing shield health does not provide an equivalent increase in effective survivability against all weapons. This is especially important when looking at the TECH PREVIEW. Doubling shield health inadvertently buffs ballistics while making lasers less viable. Lasers now have substantially more shield to work through before they can reach the hull, whereas ballistics can partially bypass that additional shield health. Increasing shields therefore doesn’t simply make every weapon take twice as long to kill it changes the relative effectiveness of the weapons themselves. The other major problem is the relationship between shield TTK and hull TTK. In the TECH PREVIEW, the shielded portion of the engagement becomes dramatically longer, while the TTK after shields are stripped becomes extremely short. This creates a strange combat rhythm where pilots spend the overwhelming majority of the fight slowly removing shields, only for the actual hull kill to happen almost instantly. That imbalance makes the shield layer disproportionately important while simultaneously making the hull and armor systems comparatively irrelevant during fighter engagements. It also creates an environment where weapons capable of bypassing shields become increasingly valuable, reinforcing the ballistic meta rather than solving it. The issue isn’t simply that fighters are taking longer to kill. The problem is where that additional TTK is being added and how it interacts with weapon mechanics. Longer shield phases, an extremely short post shield kill window, and ballistic weapons that can bypass part of the shield layer produce a combat system where lasers are disadvantaged and positional advantages take too long to convert into meaningful outcomes. The approximately four second Gladius v Gladius TTK that the basic flight profiles were built around provides an important reference point. Fighter combat can certainly evolve beyond that baseline, but doing so while simultaneously increasing shield health and preserving the existing ballistic advantage risks creating fights that are longer without becoming more interactive. LIVE already has a serious TTK and ballistic meta problem. The TECH PREVIEW’s doubled shields and increased TTK risk magnifying those problems rather than addressing them. The PvP community despises these changes nearly unanimously. We have been vocal for a year. If the feedback out of TP2 was that the TTK was too punishing to light fighters, there needs to be a new set of testers. A simple look at AC population would be all it would take to see something is VERY wrong.