Vermillion, you have disappointed me with the lack of changes leading to extra depth you stated would happen to 1.7 on Reddit. You stated armour would be buffed and more viable but the lower repair costs and extra 10% blast resistance to Xeno does nothing to that.

You've raised the difficulty so much in a attempt to limit cheesy and game breaking tactics like "spin to win" and "raiding POI's with small HV's" that you've pretty much shoe horned everyone into one meta whereas doing anything else is not only unviable but suicide.

Using heavy armour builds without having any reliance on shielding is near impossible. Trying such thing in a CV in attempt to match the meta is potentially quadrupling+ the size in order to simply last as long, aggravating many issues. A 1000 Combat Steel SV should not be blown up by a POI in two hits of a rocket no matter how much a weakness armour has to explosives. We already have to contend with potentially higher weight, lower mobility and also a repair cost/repair time that most people playing seem to avoid by playing safe.

The ridiculousness that seems to be explosive damage and penetration is impossible to contend with so you are forced to rely on shielding. The potential new shielding from Capacitors and overall increased shielding of the AI only further reinforces it, people not relying on shields with more balanced or full armoured builds now have to contend with facing huge enemy shield reserves while have nothing of a real buff of their own and losing dozens of blocks every shot.

There is really one viable way to play and looking at HWS it shows, everyone utilises mostly the same design and ideas; a 5k-10k block agile CV using hit and run tactics relying on a abundance of shield. This is the way it's done for 90% of the content. Yes people build bigger or different, but it's usually at the super end game to show off when there's more freedom and leeway.

The difference in difficulty is very noticeable. This usually extends to all three types of vehicle, they are all affected. Not everyone wants to face a steep uphill challenge from not playing the meta. Demanding is fair, but this is sometimes beyond rage inducing in a game which is already riddled with enough bugs that can end you quickly.