So, considering the wealth of ideas submitted by the player population, and the trickle of new devices via medals or additions to existing faction, I got to wondering about the process itself.

It seems, that while the template for creating new weapons is (I hope) relatively straightforward (changing colors/stats/ammo/proximity), the real issue with releasing them has to do with balance questions.

Every new device has to balance with all the existing weapons, so that if something revolutionary comes out, it might require a whole new round of balancing.

This can be avoided by finding existing unfilled niches for weapons, but it seems unlikely that there are all that many of these.

This brings to light, then, a serious issue with one of the major selling points of the game. Which is, the STEADY growth of available tech.

We seem to have an exponential problem. The more items that are added, the harder it will be/longer it will take, to release new ones.

The only solution I can think of is to just release enough options that particular weapons are less likely to dominate. But I'm curious as to how the devs plan to deal with this.

EDIT: Seeing as the devs are the only ones who could possibly have an answer for this, could the FM lock this thread until they get a look at it?

Okay. You might want to save a link to this so that you can retrieve it later. It's likely to be buried.

[locked]