Hi Jace,

I moved at the beginning of the year and haven't had a chance to play until now. I have watched the Dev Vlogs and read some of the patch notes. Great work.

Thank you for finally fixing combat Mercs! They behave as expected, and gain experience from damaging enemies not just destroying them. This is a great improvement.

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They don't seem to use their shield / armor stats or regain shields. Neither do other NPCs, so I presume this is deliberate. Is this a permanent facet of the game or will NPC ships eventually behave more like the player ship? I bring this up mostly because if it's going to stay this way then I think you should rework the Merc panel. Currently it shows shields and armor stats as fractions that don't change, even when they take damage. A single health attribute the actually reflects their current status might be more appropriate.

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It doesn't seem like profession attributes are being applied or, at the very least, my Sentinel (+15% shields) isn't. (Maybe it's just not reflected on the ship panel?)

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I can confirm that all beam weapons show as ammo type none. Beams, in general, seem like inferior versions of lasers. Beams and Lasers will only work as per the description in one of two ways:

1) Beams need MUCH higher damage and energy costs, along with significantly reduced velocity and range; or,

2) Defenses need to be reworked such that it's not just a percentage reduction but there is also a numerical reduction; that way super fast firing weak weapons won't be all around the best option. Maybe the numerical damage soak could be fixed to ship class, leaving capital ships and stations vulnerable to higher base damage weapons and largely impervious to weak ones.

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I'm glad to see the skirmish system in the game. Will there eventually be missions offered by our faction to participate in skirmishes with them? Maybe for unique rewards?

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I like that the ships are now more specialized. I do think that combat missions need to see their difficult bumped up to be more in-line with the new random encounters now that we have these more powerful ships. (The harder random spawns are a huge improvement to the game, imo. My Demi was basically a Demigod before even barely investing in defensive skills.)

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The skillbooks are 10/10. Thanks for reducing the grind to a manageable level.

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You might want to look into the distribution of Mercs in the Sandbox, particularly when playing HRE mode. It's not much of a challenge when you can hire a Destroyer or a Dreadnaught in 9+ security space. Those ships either need to only spawn in lower security space (preferable) or, alternatively, require much higher faction rep to hire.

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It would be nice if the default approach and orbit distances used different distance counters. Having to constantly adjust the range between what I shoot at and what it needs to be to loot/dock/warp is very tedious. Also, a hotkey to turn orbit on/off quickly.

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I found a wormhole paradise in my original save, but migrated to a new one to try out all the new stuff. Is it safe to try to bring it over into the new save or have some of the file schemas changed?