Just want to voice my thorough disappointment with the mindset this balance team has about combat. Its apparent that this team is struggling to think outside of same on same skill vs skill only fights. The frequency of which you talk about dog fights rather than actual battles is disappointing. Not all combat is comprised of fighters v fighters, and if you balance combat solely with that mindset, you will absolutely fail with larger ships. So lets break this down: You state you want to "define purpose for items and vehicles" yet in the same video say "we want player skill, not equipment to make the difference." Do you not see the huge contradiction there? How on earth do you expect to create a skill balance between inherently imbalanced ships. You dont make a MOLE win against fighter because it "skilled hard enough." You dont make bombers that not only wreck large ships but "skill" their way into killing the fighters that are supposed to be countering them as well. You just cant have both, you cant have defined roles and colossal skill ceilings or you WILL CREATE THE VERY META YOU SOUGHT TO DESTROY. Shield balance is again in terrible place because of this fighter v fighter mindset. You are creating the meta of time on target is all that matters because the only thing holding a small ship from killing a large ship right now is patience. The larger ship has an inherent disadvantage because of its lack of mobility. You CANNOT balance everything around 1v1 mono-to-mono fights because most fights in SC WILL BE UNBALANCED TO BEGIN WITH. If a 1mill arrow can "skill" its way to killing a 12 million hammerhead, guess what, people are going to put that crew of 8 into arrows for a cheaper price and win even harder. Do you not see the comical irony in this clip? You are discussing dogfighting while a small ship is shooting a carrack. Thats not a dog fight, the small ship has full control over the flow of that battle. You have got to stop thinking of combat as only a dogfight with same fighter v same fighter. And of course in the same breath you bring up the next issue. You are balancing for PVP in a game that is 90% PVE. You are inherently creating a god complex for players to stomp over the AI who will by their nature not chose the meta and try to bring diversity in the game. But your skill ceiling approach is absolutely caustic to gameplay diversity. The higher you make the skill ceiling in ships, the lower and lower gameplay and ship choice diversity becomes. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/4/thread/long-winded-post-balancing-combat-despite-players- Worse yet, is the advocation for turret death fields over defense. You are creating a MASSIVE issue for yourself in the future because you have to remember NPC CREW AND BLADES WILL BE A COMMON PART OF THE GAME. If you make turrets inherently deadly you then will negate the existence of fighters in any large fight. Xenothreat would have turned out DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENT if the Idris had death field turrets. You are putting so much emphasis on this skill factor that you are nuking any possibility of unfair fight balance that is not just incompetence(completely unturreted, which with AI and NPCs whats your excuse?) vs experts or an I win button for large ships against fighters regardless of skill level because remember, NPCs and Blades will be a thing. Players with large ships wont skimp on the quality of their death fields if you give them the option, rendering small ships completely obsolete to any large fight. This is just as bad of an outcome as making large ships killable by a single seat small ship. Its unfortunately clear that the balance team is getting their advice from people who see combat as an arena shooter where everyone shows up with the same ships and the same gear. This is most often not the case in Star Citizen and they should adjust their mindset accordingly. You have got to get past this strange fear of saying to players "no, you cant. Period." Its happening with mining now, and its prevalent in combat design now. Learn to tell players no, you cant just skill your way out of everything, or you might just find the Vanduul war is going to end overnight just because players showed up. And lastly on the topic of SCM+, it is an issue, and my regular suggestion to fix it is this: Remove SCM+ travel but add a sudo-quantum mode that allows you to travel faster than SCM. In sudo quantum mode you cant ram people, you cant fire weapons, and your sensor range is decreased. Entering the sudo quantum mode should require a spool up so people cant do it in combat with ease, and it should be apparent in some way that your opponent is spooling up to escape so that you can try to do the same. So Overall, my message for @YogiKlatt-CIG and the space combat team: Stop thinking of combat around PVP 1v1 matchups. Dont even consider PVP outside of same ship matchups. Balance the game around intended outcomes, not comically large skill ceilings that can outright destroy any semblance of balance. I know you guys want a good dogfight experience, thats not the hard part, the hard part is balancing the other 90% of the fight matchups that wont be same on same fighter v fighter.