For those of you that don't want to bother with the full video, here are some highlights: There are a number of paradoxes in the stated design goals of CIG, but here are the 7 that are causing the biggest issues as of right now. These paradoxes need to be resolved, they can not co-exist and only serve to create future conflicts in development. Paradox #1: "Death Matters" vs Shield Piercing CR himself states that he wants death to matter, he wants it to be a major event, he wants it to be punishing, he wants to deter people from treating death casually. So much so that he wants us to shed a tear at our character's funeral after a year worth of play on them. Yet shield piercing stands in stark contrast to this. Shield piercing creates situations where through no fault of your own you can be instantly killed. It is hard to suggest anyone will have a character that lives for a year if every combat situation with ballistics is an instant death waiting to happen. And no that is not just me exaggerating, this is CR's own scenario he described himself: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/atmospheric-room-system-4-years-later/3366236 A ballistic round passes through the ship's shield, which scrubs off some of its kinetic energy but not enough as the round's velocity was high as was its mass as it was an armor piercing round. It manages to penetrate the armor and strikes an internal component, say a power relay node. It is not even remotely a stretch to see a situation where that same round hits the cockpit instead of a component. It is CR's own vision of shield piercing that confirms people can be instantly killed through their shields through no fault of their own. Under such a system, how can anyone expect to get attached to a character that has a lifespan of days not years? Paradox #2: Physicalized Damage Will (Save/Ruin) Everything. Physicalized damage seems to be another issue that seems to occupy to states of existence at the same time. Some see physicalized as some grand savior that will solve all combat, make bullets bounce off of hulls made of paper thin materials, and solve all combat balance issues. Others see physicalized damage as the destroyer of all combat balance. Their views are not unfounded, games like War Thunder and World of Tanks show us what a physical based combat system can do, and the results are instant-deaths or swiss cheese but functional vehicles. Neither of which are conducive to good feeling combat, but instead create a massive frustrating chasm between people with skillful aim and ship design knowledge and those who just play normally. Not only that, it creates a massive, objective disadvantage towards less mobile ships, as the best way to avoid instant death, is to just not get hit. Paradox #3: Insurance vs Criminality vs Cash Store As CR has said in the past, criminality should be hard mode. But how do you create a hard mode specific to criminals when the Cash store entitles them to what they have bought? How do you make such a system that does not punish all players into this hard mode just because criminals will exploit it? Criminals and the otherwise harder modes of play like lawless space need to feel punishing, to discourage insurance from cheapening the experience, but at the same time these systems can not just be applied broadly to the point they harm the less difficult style of play, as well as needlessly harm players who gave you their money to make this game with the expectation of getting a ship with in some cases lifetime insurance in exchange. If you don't make criminal specific systems that discourage criminals from just respawning free Idrises, then you risk cheapening all of criminality by giving them infinite or discounted supplies in an area of space where none should be available. Paradox #4: Crew Count vs Crew Skill There are plenty of ship designs with far more stations and roles than they have crew. For instance the Reclaimer has only 5 beds for crew, yet it has 9 work stations not including cargo jockey (and additionally a manned turret I forgot about). So how is it that 5 crew equates to 10+ jobs. That by design demands that crew must perform multiple jobs for these ships to function. There are even worse examples like the Carrack, that has 6 crew, yet 9 stations and 3 manned turrets. Yet AI and quanta tell us this is not reasonable. AI and quanta tell us that these crew all have proficiencys, and will demand dramatically different prices to work specific jobs. So by the very nature of traits, you should not be capable of hiring an NPC to do multiple conflicting job types like engineer and turret gunner, because they would demand different pay for those two jobs. Also their traits affect how well they perform these jobs, so multi-role should not be a reasonable idea for these ships. We are stuck with a paradox where ships require multi-role to function, yet the very nature of AI traits says they should not be expected to multi-role. Paradox #5: "Infinite for Balance" vs Resource Management It is all too common to hear the phrase "Energy weapons are weak but infinite." This seems to be their design goal for balancing them. Setting aside how near impossible it is to make meaningful balance of limited vs infinite without making infinite a wet noodle so bad at its job that its not worth using, this mindset runs afoul of another major mechanic in the game: resource management. Resource management tells us that everything is limited. Everything. Oxygen, power, gravity, ship fuel, ammo. All of it is limited, all if it will run out, otherwise why they are making such an elaborate system must be a cruel joke if these items are not meant to run out anyway. So we end up with two paradoxical statements "energy weapon ammo is infinite" and "resource management." Paradox #6: "The game is not PVP focused" vs PVP Pandering and Slack Cutting CR started early in saying that SC is not a PVP focused game, PVP will be available, but most of the game is supposed to be PVE in nature. Players and AI are supposed to be interchangeable, you are not supposed to be so easily aware of when you are competing with a player or an AI. And the AI are supposed to have a diverse range of skill levels so that everyone will have a chance to feel capable. Because if you're only ever competing against other people, then there will always be winners and losers. And if you're someone that's not that great or don't have enough time to practice up, it will be a sucky experience and you won't play. And yet, what we see from CIG is an unwillingness to make PVP players conform. To punish them for their behavior like you would any other NPC if they did the same. Instead we get systems that "discourage pvp" while "not discouraging pvp." We saw it with Xenothreat (the PTU original when there was no monitored zone.) They were unwilling to clamp down on PVP in a PVE event and it only agitated the community making the event unplayable. We heard rumors of devs in livestreamer chats begging them to stop or "they would have to take action" rather than just treating these players like you would any NPC, and keeping them from repeating their actions while quickly removing them from the situation. CIG give high skill PVP players massive power over combat, at the expense of AI and player alike, to the point PVP streamers can run over servers of PVE xenothreat players with impunity. Their behavior is given more slack than any NPC would ever be given. Imagine if an NPC showed up with perfect framerate and ran over every single player in the world. Would that be ideal gameplay? Yet CIG give players more power and capacity than they would any AI. Instead of forcing PVP players to behave as expected, they empower them to break the illusion of the world. Would that be living up to CR's vision of "If you're someone that's not that great or don't have enough time to practive up, it will be a sucky experience and you won't play?" Paradox #7: Large and Non-Combat Ships vs Fighters v Fighters Being the Exclusive Target of All Balance Focus. It is clear and without doubt that combat design revolves around fighters v fighters; High skill vs High skill play. Putting aside what we just got through saying in the last paradox, when you hyperfocus on one subset, you tend to miss the big picture. What is good for the fox, is not good for the flock. What works for making "engaging dogfighting" can make capital ship combat a laughing stock. Imagine a situation where a freelancer needs to 1v1 duel an arrow and win before it is allowed to just leave. You don't have to, they already described it when they discussed their upcoming quantum mode changes. It creates a situation where just to leave, a freelancer must lower its defenses. (putting aside the argument that everyone will just swap mode and max speed boost away, but lets say in this scenario the arrow can stay in range long enough to do damage). Changes made to suit fighters, negatively harm the larger ships and the non-combat ships that are not designed to turn fight. The inverse is also true, making large ship changes like extremely accurate high speed projectile turrets can have massive repercussions, negating fighters from large fights, and making heavily turreted ships like the hammerhead into all purpose deleters of any ship they can hit. These paradoxes are landmines of development, one must replace the other. They can not co-exist, and the longer they remain unadressed, the bigger the consequences their explosion will incur when they are finally triggered.