I could just copy the text from the previous post. Because this is a total repeat. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/4/thread/the-balancing-around-arena-commander-needs-to-stop But, I'm not going to repeat myself. Instead, I'm going to expand why balancing around AC is a bad idea! Let just get it out of the way first: You are balancing around Arena Commander. You literally gave this as a reason in the patch notes: Tweaked the Ares Ion weapon to have a higher RPM with more DPS and made aim adjustments, making it harder to track and one shot single seat fighters. First of all: You can't one shot most single seat fighters. Arrow, M50 (racing ship) and other ship with 1x shield is the exception. E.g. a Gladius can tank a shot and then regenerate shields to tank another one. This show that whoever is giving you feedback are not testing this thoroughly. Secondly: Tracking has to do with the aim potential of the ship - i.e. maneuverability. You didn't change the handling of the Ares. You removed fixed assist so shots that should otherwise connect doesn't (this is an RNG nerf). Fixed assist was added/adjusted in 3.10 as a solution to issues with the netcode that otherwise made fixed weapon unviable. And that's what the Ion is now - unviable. So what is the real issue with this? "We have 119 ships to choose from, so it can't be that important, right?". "Just fly something else?". The problem with this is an inherent flaw in balancing. You are favouring certain play-style over others ("light fighter meta" and "nose to nose 1v1 combat"). Both which are largely not applicable to the PU (large variety of ships, multiple engagements at once, and thus different approaches needs to be made to combat). However, please be aware that skilled light fighter players that have experience outside arena commander have no problems defeating the current Ion flow by an equally skilled player. Playing the PU is a somewhat different skillset than 1v1 combat in battle royale. Mostly, because there is no 15 mins timer ticking down and a scoreboard to climb (encouraging the quick kills at all costs). So PU combat can be played with a lot more patience and going in for the quick nose vs nose kill is often a bad strategy. Even the light vs light fighter combat we see in AC is often a bad strategy in the PU. If you see two good player fight each other in AC you will most often see one player being dead while the other player is nearly dead too. This is not clever in a game where emphasis is on survival, or even being able to continue flying your ship back to a base. Component damage is already a thing (though only to AoE) and several ships can't fly and just spin when losing vital parts with thrusters. As such, this is not a play-style that should be encouraged outside of AC. This the play-style of an Arcade Shooter. As for what goes for 1v1: (Because this of course needs to be somewhat balanced too. "Somewhat" because you will never balance an Aurora vs. a Javelin). I'll quote from my previous post, and expand: If you are stupid enough to try to face tank a size 7 cannon, the player that flies the Ares Ion should 100% be rewarded with a kill for landing an accurate shot. Face-tanking an Ares at 100 meter distance is a bad idea. But as soon as you move the combat to 350 meter, there is half of second for the light fighter player to change their flight path so a perfectly aimed shot won't connect. And we are not talking "seeing and dodging", thus reflexes doesn't need to be factored in. We are talking a continuous change of flight path to prevent any shots from connecting. Thus you need to fight with more patience than going in for an AC style face tank kill. In a recent post, someone claimed the Vanguard is OP. My refute to that equally applies to the Ares or any heavy fighter you might introduce: The more maneuverable (but fragile) a ship is - the higher degree of skill is required to fly it, because, obvious, taking damage will have more consequence. For this reason, if you have two beginners fighting each other, the more tanky ship might appear OP to those two player: In the extreme example, where none of two beginner players knows how to move, and just sit still and face-tank each other, the high dps/tanky ship will win 10/10, because the key strength (maneuverability) of the lighter ship will not be utilised. Thus balance needs to be made assuming the key strengths of a given ship is utilised to the fullest potential. If you balance the game so two mediocre players in light vs. heavy fighter have an equal fight, the light fighter would need to have an insane max potential. Because it would be to assume that a mediocre player is not able to utilise the key strength of the light fighter to the fullest. That insane max potential would then be meta-OP in the hands of skilled players. Thus for the less skilled players, a more tanky ship with less emphasis on movement will be the better option. I.e., you will never get it perfectly balanced across all skill levels. If you want to avoid meta, you need to balance for the highest skill players. In my last post, I suggested the following: If you feel the cannon is too easy to aim, add a slight tigger delay (like cannon needs 0.2 second to charge) instead. This works well with the spool-up time on the Inferno where you have to lead/predict where your target will be once shots starts leaving the barrel and adds a skill check. This is a much better solution as a it still rewards a skilled player (with higher difficulty level). RNG netcode and lack of fixed assist that is supposed to mitigate said netcode is not! Edit to add: You have a much more serious issue you should be focusing on (no not desync, talking to you VET) that will improve combat for all ships and solve a lot of issues with heavy fighters and larger ships to the point where you will have to buff them all again. Accelerating backward should cause G-effects. Flying backward is fine (6 DOF) and may reverse several times during a battle. But accelerating backward should be heavily punished with G-forces.