Hi,

great game, I love it. It really feels like EVE since when I played it and is absolutely relaxing.
You have my deepest respect for developing such a project as a single developer.


Some things I noticed:

There could be an issue with Life Support.
I traveled from Void Starcross to Felishar and had ~10min Life Support left upon reaching the Jump Gate.
On arrival in Felishar I suddenly have only ~3min left.
Is this due to Sector Stats ('hazards') or is something else going on here?
Ingame I could not fully understand the drop - if it is intentional, could you perhaps add a message indicating decreasing environmental conditions? Maybe combined with a graze period (1min?) until the effects fully kick in.
At least for new players like me it could be a little confusing (and I had several "deaths" because time was not enough to mine ore for a mission).

Something else I noticed was that while trying to stay alive, docking at a Medical Facility did not replenish LIfe Support as I was expecting. The timer just resumed when undocking. Now today on reloading the game at the same Medical Facility my Life Support is now fully restored.

I now also have the same mission twice in my log after reload. One of them was completed after mining some ore in Felishar and returning it to Biomate in Void Starcross. The other says 'Accepted' although my mission tracker says that I do not have any active mission.

The amount of life support stays the same, but the drain is higher in the new sector, hence the lower remaining time. You can see this if you look at the big red bar at the bottom of the life support panel. You see the environmental conditions for a sector in the map, there's also an overlay from red to green according to the capabilities of your state of Life support. But if you don't invest in life support before entering an unknown sector, well you die.
You probably didn't put the life support items you got from the start into the life support panel?

The medical facilities only replenish it if you pay extra when docked or if you stay in the vicinity (although that effect is rather slow). Better dock at stations.

Thanks for the clarification. I think I had already assigned the starter food and basic filter, but only looked at the remaining time.

I did not see any option for replenishing as a service so I thought every station would be same. I'll try again.

Besides now that I have some thermal and waste modules I'm having a better time. Learning curve I guess ;)

I think the timer mechanic might just be a waste of time, what's that adding? A sense of pressure to ... return back to where you came from to redock and then go back to where you came? Its one of those things that sounds like it came out of a committee meeting, everyone patting themselves on the back that its great, without actually trying it.

Sure, upgrade your filters etc. But for what? Slightly longer before you're forced to redock and then go back?

I think what it needs is a deepening (similar to Elite Dangerous), more access to the markets, more access to npcs (whatever that might mean, more X3 type things floating around on the map, more interactions), hidden things (Elite back in the day finding the Anaconda). Of course, all of that is easy to code and has no complications, expect it tomorrow :) ! (cracking good base of a game so far, just needs the flesh, I would follow Rimworlds path and make it a mod-first sort of game, he exposed one of the better modding APIs I've seen).

it adds a simple yet effective way to limit how far you can explore without investing in a better ship.
There's no fuel, so something else is needed, otherwise one could reach the furthest point on the map right from the start.
Maybe take a submarine sim which limits the number of torpedoes to carry. It makes you think twice about each shot.
Every games has something limiting, the X games had the Xenon sectors for example.

I like the survival touch this adds otherwise mining would be just boring. It feels much more like an achievement to think about the equipment with which to relieve a toxic sector of some valuable ore.
And later on you don't notice the mechanic at all as long as you stay in the inner sectors. But it gives meaning to the frontier.

Can the LS adjustment timer be done to an existing game? So far, I have only seen that option when creating a new Sandbox game. Thank you.