I'm sorry everyone for the title, but after almost two years of no response to polite requests for updates or any information on the Retaliator after an official Retaliator community letter, it's time to stop being nice. CIG as you have received both a physical letter (which was signed fore and them promptly lost and no-one know where it went to), then a copy was sent through PR (Sandy) which finally made it's way into Ben's hands. After a month or so he finally decided to respond and promised to look at the community concerns and though with the ship development team after 2.1.0 had been released. As you can tell the community have been quite polite about this promise Ben made, to the point of being saints. Sadly many original pledge owners and latter owners, got sick and tired on no response from CIG and CCU'd to the Polaris in the hopes it would be the ship that would meant the role the Retaliator was sold as. But sadly many still hold hope CIG will come to the party. But after a few had pointed out that in the 2017 End of Year PU Timeline information, the Retaliator isn't even listed, while other ships have been (in some cases these ships are going through their 4th rework). (see image below) ( I should note that the BMM and Carrack aren't even being touched to late this year, while many were lead to believe just after 3.0.0 release) So before anyone decides the Retaliator community have no rights to request or even demand a response from CIG, just think about all the other ships that are flyable, and the number of times those ships have had a rework. Also remember Chris Roberts himself stated the RETALIATOR IS THE MULTIPLAYER/CREW TESTBED SHIP for all other large ships to come, yet we've seen the Starfarer and the Caterpillar released, and the concerns raised about the Retaliator, happened in these two large ships also. So what happened CIG? For some reason CIG has this habit of forgetting their own promises and plans, so it's time we made them accountable what they say and don't do(this isn't just limited to the Tali community, there are other communities that have been left in the dark) One tried and pissed backer. (yes there are other ship I've got concerns about, but none have had such a complete lack of interest from CIG as the Retaliator!) To recap what the Retaliator community have asked CIG to look at and fix here's the original letter which was based off 3 years of community raised issues and concerns with the pre-hangar released Retaliator, and then the hangar and flyable releases. Remember the community asked CIG to look at the core three primary concerns and issues, none of the others hinted at in the letter. The community has reached a consensus on these three issues: Turret Fields of View / Fire From past experience in other games, we believe that good turret placement provides fun, effective, and rewarding gameplay, whereas heavily impaired fields of fire easily generate frustrating gameplay. Some of the turrets offer limited fields of fire that create total blind spots and in many directions also strictly limit opportunities to bring multiple turrets to bear on a target. The advantages of a large gunnery crew of five lie solely in their ability to either overlap and concentrate fire or for each turret to be able to engage a separate target effectively. We feel that the large crew required to man these turrets should allow for one or the other of the above approaches in order to promote richer and more enjoyable cooperative team play. There are possibly other valid concerns about the turrets, but those are not dependent on remodeling and should come to light in later balancing passes, if they occur. Missing Crew Stations in the Base Hull Chris Roberts said, "Star Citizen goes beyond the traditional ‘man the guns or fly the ship’ experience." We believe that the Retaliator, a ship meant for multi-crew and used as a testbed for these functionalities, should be designed according to Chris' philosophy, with options for an engaging multiplayer experience for both combat and non-combat player involvement and enjoyment. The current design has only a single engineering station without a seat capable of securing a crew member. Providing dedicated positions to tasks such as (but not limited to) science, tactics, navigation, and shields/power configuration – that neither the gunners nor the pilot can focus on during combat – is critical to the optimal use of such a large ship built for long duration flight and bombing. We believe that stations supporting non-combat gameplay crew functions (for when combat crew stations are not in use) or additional combat duty stations to relieve pilot or gunner workload during a fight should exist in the base hull,as this will enable a rich multi-crew experience in or out of combat. Escape Pod Accessibility Given the severe consequences of death in Star Citizen, the crew of a large ship like the Retaliator must be given a fighting chance to evacuate a stricken vessel. This means that at least by the time the PU is released, the ship’s escape pods must be more accessible, or perhaps placed in multiple locations. Additionally, B-Deck is a wonderful space that has so much potential to add more interesting, useful, or fun elements to the ship if these escape pods were moved to a more accessible location. Closing Thoughts There are several lower-urgency opportunities for improvement that can be best summed up as a strong feeling that the interior space (the large bathroom, redundant small elevators in a large room, the B deck, etc.) of the Retaliator is not as well utilized as it could be. While we would love to see these issues remedied, they are of much lower importance to the Retaliator community than the above three issues and thus could be worked on prior to the release of the Persistent Universe. We would also like you to know that we understand the constraints imposed by the use of the Retaliator in Squadron 42. We would be perfectly happy to have the current Retaliator be an older model for use in Squadron 42, with a newer, updated model made available for the Persistent Universe. We understand that the Retaliator modules are still in concept, so in this letter we have attempted to focus only on the issues we see with the base hull of the ship. There are other potential issues with the various modules, particularly with the torpedo launcher modules, that we would also like to discuss with you at the appropriate time. This is quoted from an old topic that had promises from CIG that these concerns were going to look into and respond to. That was 2 years ago. https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/286738/dear-cig-retaliator-base-hull-feedback-edit-updated-with-ben-s-response/p1 Last couple of responses from ship development Team: Quote: CIG Ben Lesnick @wcloaf The Constellation and the Retaliator will both receive significant balance changes in the coming patches. You're playing the very, very first release of multicrew... the next (and current) step is to learn from how people play the game. That has already shown that the Retaliator needs more protection and a better system for defense. We have folks playing with that balance right now (at Chris' request!), although I would warn you that it's going to be an iterative process rather than massive, immediate changes. (After all, the current focus for most of the team working on 2.0 is stability and other blockers!) Quote: CIG Ben Lesnick @wcloaf In the immediate future, you'll see value/number changes (they're debating a new set as I write this!)... physical changes to the model will take longer, and will have to be prioritized after getting other ships into the game. I think the most important message I can get out to threads like this is that we don't consider any of the ships final yet... there's always more work to be done. You could said this is really a request for all ship communities to CIG, as the Tali community isn't the only one having issues with CIG about their lack luster level of community responding.