CIG ran its third Time-to-Kill balance test on September 17, and it is the most drastic one yet. Shield health went up by 134 to 212 percent, alpha damage by 145 percent, and AI ships now take 40 percent more damage than players do. The stated aim is a fight where about two thirds of the time is spent breaking shields.
TTK, time to kill, is how long it takes to destroy a ship; TTD, time to die, is the same measure from the target’s side. These tests run on a separate Tech-Preview channel and change nothing on the live servers yet. What they show is the direction CIG wants ship combat to go, and this round explains that direction in unusual detail.
How the test ran
The test was open to all backers on the Tech-Preview channel, on US-only servers, running overnight into Friday with the end time to be decided. It covered both the Persistent Universe, the main open world, and Arena Commander, the separate combat and racing mode. CIG collected feedback in a dedicated Spectrum thread.
Two caveats came with the build. Shield health was unintentionally doubled compared to the previous preview, which CIG says will be corrected for the next test. And a heavy known issue meant ships skipped soft death, the disabled state a ship normally enters before it is destroyed, and simply exploded at zero critical health.
What CIG took from the second test
CIG summarised the feedback from Tech-Preview 2 before explaining the new numbers. Sentiment was positive overall, but the main criticism was that lower shield health combined with higher shield absorption gave ballistic weapons an unintended advantage.
- The plan to keep TTK as low as in the first preview, by different means, only partly worked; the survey said fights were still too short for small and medium ships
- Feedback on large and capital ships contradicted itself, with players calling TTK both too low and too high
- The lower shield regeneration and longer slap down time, the pause before a shield starts recovering after damage, were judged a success
The goals for Tech-Preview 3
The third preview builds on the second rather than the first. CIG listed five goals.
- Shield balancing, with roughly two thirds of a fight spent breaking the shield
- Keep balancing energy weapons against ballistic weapons
- Refine slap down times
- Raise TTK in player-versus-player fights while keeping it low against AI
- Raise TTK for large and capital ships
Every value that changed
Unless CIG says otherwise, every change from the earlier previews was reverted and the following applied on top of the Tech-Preview 2 base.
- Shield health up 134 to 212 percent
- Armor health down 30 percent on small ships, rising to up 96 percent on capital ships
- Alpha damage, the damage of a single hit, up 145 percent
- Armor deflection up 145 percent against energy damage and 80 percent against ballistic damage
- Shield resistance set to 40 to 50 percent against ballistics and 35 to 45 percent against energy, varying with shield health and how much power is assigned to shields
- Shield absorption set to 0 to 80 percent against ballistics, varying with shield health
- Slap down time up 100 percent while the shield is damaged, the same as the last test, and up 70 percent once it is broken, which is 30 percent less than last time
- Shield regeneration up 95 percent, keeping the earlier debuff in proportion, plus a fix for ships with multiple shield faces recharging four times faster than intended
- A new PVE modifier: AI-controlled ships take 40 percent more damage
Why the numbers are so extreme
CIG says the intent is for more of each fight to be spent on shields rather than armor and critical parts. The resistance and absorption changes are meant to pull ballistic weapons back relative to energy weapons and to make the power triangle matter: putting more power into shields should directly reduce what ballistics do to you.
The size of the changes comes down to tooling. CIG can adjust shield and armor health quickly, but it cannot quickly change the hit points of a ship’s critical internal parts. In the second preview those parts made up too large a share of a ship’s total health for a one-third target, so the only way to reach the two-thirds shield goal was to raise shield and armor health and then raise alpha damage to keep TTK down. If this round works, CIG says it will look for a cleaner way to get the same result.
Base values were tuned in a controlled Gladius-versus-Gladius scenario, so CIG does not guarantee they carry across every ship size, shield size and weapon size. Uncontrolled player-versus-player and player-versus-AI sessions followed, and CIG says values that look odd on paper played well in practice.
What this means for new players
None of this is on the live servers, so nothing changes for a new account today. What it tells you is where combat is heading: longer fights against other players, quick fights against AI, shields that reward putting power into them, and energy weapons that CIG wants to be competitive with ballistics. If you are choosing a first ship, weapon loadouts on the live build may feel different once this lands, so favour a ship you like flying over one tuned for the current numbers. If you want to help shape the result, this test was open to all backers on the Tech-Preview channel and CIG reads the feedback threads. Our Star Citizen referral code guide explains how the 50,000 UEC signup bonus works and how to apply code STAR-6WPK-3K56 before you enlist.
Frequently Asked Questions
TTK stands for time to kill, how long it takes to destroy a ship. CIG has run three Tech-Preview tests in 2026 to rebalance it, most recently on September 17.
No. They run on the separate Tech-Preview channel with US-only servers. CIG has not said when or whether the values will reach a live patch.
Shield health rose 134 to 212 percent, alpha damage 145 percent, armor health fell 30 percent on small ships and rose up to 96 percent on capital ships, and AI ships take 40 percent more damage.
It cannot quickly change the hit points of critical ship parts, so it raised shield and armor health and alpha damage instead to make about two thirds of a fight about shields.
Relative to energy weapons, yes. New shield resistance of 40 to 50 percent and absorption of up to 80 percent against ballistics are meant to undo the unintended ballistic advantage from the previous test.
Source: [All Backer] TTK TTD Balance Test Tech-Preview #3. Details come from CIG’s TTK TTD Balance Test Tech-Preview #3 post in the Spectrum patch notes channel, September 17, 2026.
