Posted December 09, 2019
A. Mercenaries
Early on mercenaries were a cheat. I just hired a mining mercenary with 4K cargo and got very high profit this way. Roughly ~80K per trip when my own mining trips were getting me 5-10K at most and were much longer.
Later mining merc became essentially useless because they couldn't keep up with my speed.
Suggestions:
1. Mining (and likely salvaging) specialized mercs needs balancing.
2. When hiring a merc information about speed (not just thrust) should be somewhere, we need to know that merc will slow whole fleet down before merc is hired.
B. Active scanning
One of the most useless things in game... while this does provide some income, it is the only mechanic that doesn't seem to be useful out of missions. I think a bit more should be tied to scanners, may be scanning ships should give something like 'crit' chance for combat, scanning asteroids should give mining efficiency, e t c? Also there is only two types of missions related to scanning - scan structure and scan ship. Would be nice if there were missions like "there are derelict parts in this system, scan to figure out who it was and retrieve black box".
C. Salvaging
I only 'learned' salvaging lvl1, but it seems like relatively useless thing. There is no salvage in starting system (or I'm completely unable to find it), no salvaging missions (Like: "that wreck is in the way/clean it up before it scatters and damages something"). I hoped that salvaging will increase loot gain, but it doesn't seem to. And remains of destroyed ships are anticlimactically cheap.
D. Raider lvl10 missions
Over time I played I got only two types of combat missions (debt collector is not directly combat), it was to destroy raiders (usually "lvl10") or to eliminate specific target. Surprisingly enough those lvl10 raiders use either shuttles or escort ships and sometimes are ridiculously weak. My own lvl5 escort with lvl3 lasers dials with them easily - capacitor's running dry is a bigger issue than those opponents...
And such missions have very weird conditions: after you destroyed your target you need to go to very specific station for unknown reason... Why reward can't be collected at any station that belongs to the faction that requested the job? Not to mention that combat and reward are usually in sectors which belong to factions completely unrelated one to another.
E. Loot for combat.
As I mentioned, there is very little to loot, lvl10 raider or pirate from edge systems, all give same amount of credits from loot containers ~8K and very little actual loot. Usually level 1 or lvl3 weapon, some ammo, some commodity like chocolate and that's it... Even salvaging remains of a 1M carrier (Mule) doesn't provide much income (I did not focus on salvaging, but doesn't seem like much can be gained either way). This makes combat very unprofitable. More of an annoyance, especially since I can use any gate to get out and than jump back in and there will be no pirates.
On top of small reward, loot that I gain can become rather numerous (three different cannons, three different types of candies, couple wrecks, basic thruster, e t c) and it is a bit annoying to sell each of those items one by one. Would be nice if the process was smoother. Either 'junk' not needing confirmation or a way to sell 'junk' in bulk.
F. Garage
In 'life support' section we can replace one item with another, but in case of weapons and utilities this is not possible, I usually have to remove old module before placing new one. This is a bit uncomfortable, please fix this.
G. Skill's, mission's, Shop's UI
I had trouble finding 'utility ship' skill anywhere, only to learn that it is on a starting station on a different page... This is very confusing, these lists have both scroll and 'pages'. Please use only one of those, because when there is a scroll player doesn't expect to have 'pages' as well.
H. Equipment
Some of equipment is named in confusing manner. For example beams and lasers. Lasers are beams, as such I ‘learned’ couple ‘beam’ skills while thinking that I’m improving my lasers… Personally I would have expected separation into Energy beams and Energy projectiles, not the way it is now…
Afterburners can be a bit of a cheat, not only they are my primary travel method. They make disengaging way too easy.
I. Shipyard and shop.
Please add a way to show only ships and equipment that player can use.
J. Map and travel time
Map is very weird – one central system that is connected to 6 branches, no factions are connected. Not only this doesn’t make sense from economical standpoint, this affects travel time very negatively and with some systems draining life support very fast I had to sit and watch my ship travel to not lose said ship instead of making myself tea.
Suggestions:
1. A bit more ‘connections’ between systems.
2. When we hover over system on map, there should be information with present lvl of mining and salvaging resources
3. Perhaps another way to alleviate issue of long travel time can be better autopilot: a switch near ‘autopilot icon/button’ not just to reach system but to dock automatically at closest station.
P.S.
Thanks for the game. I found it to be interesting, but a bit too grindy early on.
Early on mercenaries were a cheat. I just hired a mining mercenary with 4K cargo and got very high profit this way. Roughly ~80K per trip when my own mining trips were getting me 5-10K at most and were much longer.
Later mining merc became essentially useless because they couldn't keep up with my speed.
Suggestions:
1. Mining (and likely salvaging) specialized mercs needs balancing.
2. When hiring a merc information about speed (not just thrust) should be somewhere, we need to know that merc will slow whole fleet down before merc is hired.
B. Active scanning
One of the most useless things in game... while this does provide some income, it is the only mechanic that doesn't seem to be useful out of missions. I think a bit more should be tied to scanners, may be scanning ships should give something like 'crit' chance for combat, scanning asteroids should give mining efficiency, e t c? Also there is only two types of missions related to scanning - scan structure and scan ship. Would be nice if there were missions like "there are derelict parts in this system, scan to figure out who it was and retrieve black box".
C. Salvaging
I only 'learned' salvaging lvl1, but it seems like relatively useless thing. There is no salvage in starting system (or I'm completely unable to find it), no salvaging missions (Like: "that wreck is in the way/clean it up before it scatters and damages something"). I hoped that salvaging will increase loot gain, but it doesn't seem to. And remains of destroyed ships are anticlimactically cheap.
D. Raider lvl10 missions
Over time I played I got only two types of combat missions (debt collector is not directly combat), it was to destroy raiders (usually "lvl10") or to eliminate specific target. Surprisingly enough those lvl10 raiders use either shuttles or escort ships and sometimes are ridiculously weak. My own lvl5 escort with lvl3 lasers dials with them easily - capacitor's running dry is a bigger issue than those opponents...
And such missions have very weird conditions: after you destroyed your target you need to go to very specific station for unknown reason... Why reward can't be collected at any station that belongs to the faction that requested the job? Not to mention that combat and reward are usually in sectors which belong to factions completely unrelated one to another.
E. Loot for combat.
As I mentioned, there is very little to loot, lvl10 raider or pirate from edge systems, all give same amount of credits from loot containers ~8K and very little actual loot. Usually level 1 or lvl3 weapon, some ammo, some commodity like chocolate and that's it... Even salvaging remains of a 1M carrier (Mule) doesn't provide much income (I did not focus on salvaging, but doesn't seem like much can be gained either way). This makes combat very unprofitable. More of an annoyance, especially since I can use any gate to get out and than jump back in and there will be no pirates.
On top of small reward, loot that I gain can become rather numerous (three different cannons, three different types of candies, couple wrecks, basic thruster, e t c) and it is a bit annoying to sell each of those items one by one. Would be nice if the process was smoother. Either 'junk' not needing confirmation or a way to sell 'junk' in bulk.
F. Garage
In 'life support' section we can replace one item with another, but in case of weapons and utilities this is not possible, I usually have to remove old module before placing new one. This is a bit uncomfortable, please fix this.
G. Skill's, mission's, Shop's UI
I had trouble finding 'utility ship' skill anywhere, only to learn that it is on a starting station on a different page... This is very confusing, these lists have both scroll and 'pages'. Please use only one of those, because when there is a scroll player doesn't expect to have 'pages' as well.
H. Equipment
Some of equipment is named in confusing manner. For example beams and lasers. Lasers are beams, as such I ‘learned’ couple ‘beam’ skills while thinking that I’m improving my lasers… Personally I would have expected separation into Energy beams and Energy projectiles, not the way it is now…
Afterburners can be a bit of a cheat, not only they are my primary travel method. They make disengaging way too easy.
I. Shipyard and shop.
Please add a way to show only ships and equipment that player can use.
J. Map and travel time
Map is very weird – one central system that is connected to 6 branches, no factions are connected. Not only this doesn’t make sense from economical standpoint, this affects travel time very negatively and with some systems draining life support very fast I had to sit and watch my ship travel to not lose said ship instead of making myself tea.
Suggestions:
1. A bit more ‘connections’ between systems.
2. When we hover over system on map, there should be information with present lvl of mining and salvaging resources
3. Perhaps another way to alleviate issue of long travel time can be better autopilot: a switch near ‘autopilot icon/button’ not just to reach system but to dock automatically at closest station.
P.S.
Thanks for the game. I found it to be interesting, but a bit too grindy early on.
