Star Citizen 3.7 Quantum Interdiction & RSI Mantis FAQ
Welcome to some more Star Citizen with lot of new information on Quantum Interdiction it’s future plans, how it’s being balanced for Alpha 3.7 and the Mantis’ Initial Release, as well as other ships using these mechanics in the future & how they are going to help prevent griefing. There is some quite juicy information here, so let’s take a look.
The RSI Mantis is a Quantum Interdictor and makes use of the Quantum Enforcement Mechanics to snare or dampen Quantum Drives within it’s area of effect.
The Quantum Interdiction Devices are coming to other ships in the future though.
Appropriate Utility Ports on ships will be able to make use of them. These won’t be as powerful as the units built into ships such as the Mantis, which has a focused role to use it, you may have to make some compromises to another ships loadout to make a QID work. They will be used by various AI ships and security forces to interrupt player quantum travel.
The Mantis pulling ships out of Quantum in 3.7 inital release will not affect the players crime stat HOWEVER they are adding QI to the law system and it will be illegal in certain juristicions (probably all UEE & lawful ones).
That said I suspect that bounty hunters will want to use these to catch criminals as well, so maybe there is going to be some leeway… maybe illegal if you pull out non criminals?
Or maybe only illegal near stations and planets?
With that in mind in lore Just as UEE civilians have access to heavy offensive weaponry, they have access to QEDs for personal protection and for use in careers that support the Advocacy and navy. This is to be able to create situations where the use of interdiction is sanctioned, such as working within a security force or defending a homestead from pirates.
They are looking at ways to balance the QIDs and Mantis
Anyone caught by a QED will be pulled out of quantum travel and be unable to initiate it again for a short period, be they friend, foe even the Mantis itself is affected.
For its initial release, the QED has extreme power requirements taking power away that would otherwise be allocated to shields, thrusters, and weapons, it also generates A LOT OF HEAT. There is also a long cooldown period ensures that QEDs aren’t constantly generating snares around the universe. Eventually, greater restrictions around green zones and increased law enforcement patrols will mitigate overuse.
Also they are currently working out it’s cool down BUT expect a cooldown of at least several minutes.
For 3.7 the Mantis will be able to stop any ship of any size but as they iterate on the feature and develop more versions of QED, they will determine the ‘QED to quantum drive size‘ balance.
You won’t be able to properly use the QID while the mantis is inside another ship.
EMPs can disrupt power plants potentially long enough to prevent QID from working.
The Mantis has no cargo capacity. Players planning to ambush cargo-laden ships should consider bringing support.
Longer term, there are plans to give players the opportunity to escape interdiction by dynamically adjusting their quantum drives.
QI is by no means a complete mechanic as with many features as complex as interdiction, the first implementation you see is just that, and is frequently subject to change. We have already experienced an early version of interdiction via NPCs in 3.6, and this is the very first implementation for player interdiction. It will be improved and be iterated on over time, and they intend to make those improvements fairly quickly. Specifically, CIG said they would make the following improvements to interdiction over the coming patches:
- More aggressive law enforcement response to the activation of such devices in prohibited zones
- Law enforcement dialogue related to the various infractions
- Dialogue to support a variety of NPC character types that have been pulled from QT
- Larger area of interdiction
- Improved tracking of ships that have been pulled from QT
- Mission content involving interdiction/QT-dampening devices
In the future they will be adding more flexibility to where you can quantum travel to and setting courses to create safer or faster routes, though this is not coming with Alpha 3.7, so in the short term you can creatively use the nav points already in game and even power down your QD mid flight & change destination to do some more unexpected routes.
The QID are planned to be used to trap NPCs as well as players ships so you could be grabbing pirates, navy, cargo ships or anything really, it could be pvp or pve!
The Mantis is currently too large to fit in the Polaris HOWEVER they are going to look at the hangar size of the polaris when it goes into production, potentially bringing it up to the standard landing pad metrics, which would allow the Mantis and other ships to land properly.
The Mantis is intended for long range gameplay and has both a bed and toilet to ease the burden of long quantum-travel-related activities.
