- issue: white and green items with a prefix quickly become obsolete and useless, as player progresses to rare and then superior tiers of gear. As a result, massive amount of white and green gear dropped by enemies ends up either sold "en masse" or ignored.
-- observation: one of major Diablo 3 shortcominds was of the same nature - tons of "crap" loot, which players were not interested to even see any details about. And that spawned lots of disapproval from players.
-- suggestion: allow rarity upgrade in the crafting system to not result in creating of "modified" tag on an item, therefore allowing to perform this crafting upgrade repeatedly. As a compensation, crafting materials for "rarity upgrade" could be tripled or even quadrupled, or the cost could be iteratively increased with each rarity upgrade on the same item. This would solve the above mentioned problem: now all white and green drops will worth to be looked at - "do i have some interesting item type / item level / prefix combo here?", because all those items would not be doomed to be "inferior forever" just because they spawned white or green. In the same time, this will also be good sink for crafting materials. And this will also make crafting system more worth the effort to use it.
-- another suggestion: the above could possibly also do good for "upgrade level" crafting recipe, thus allowing multiple consequental upgrades to a piece of gear (with iteratively higher cost at each level upgrade). Because players often grow attached to specific weapon/module for a combination of bonuses, prefix and/or color of weapon effects on it, but are forced to replace such items whenever they "outlevel" them significantly further on. It's bad to have no choice but to scrap / sell a "favorite toy".

- issue: each augmentation gives flat bonus (currently +20 to a stat), but relatively to bonuses from gear, this grows weakier and weakier the higher level gear player uses.
-- suggestion: change it to percentage-based bonuses. I.e., instead of "+20", each augmentation level would give something like +5%...+10% to a stat (subject to balancing). This way, it'll be possible to balance augmentation bonuses independently of player's current level, giving proper weight to augmentation mechanic at all levels.

- issue: currently, it's impossible to have certain colors for a ship. For example, looks like it's not possible to have pure red (RBB 255,0,0) - it's always some bit or either pink or orange tint in it. Also, many color/roughness combinations currently suffer from being way too dark.
-- suggestion: add "brightness" slider to color's properties (right above or below "roughness" slider). P.S. Red goes fast! :D

- issue: high-risk location spawn in random region of a system.
-- explanation / suggestion: making signal decoders to always spawn a high-risk area in player's current _region_ of a system - could be very good, for three reasons: 1st, players would be able to then generate high-risk battles against factions they desire to fight; 2nd, it feels natural when "signal" decoder detects a location not so far away; 3rd, it saves time, because then would be no cases when one would need to cross whole system to enter a high risk location he just created.

- issue: current signal decoders drop rate is too low.
-- explanation: found some ~200 superior items in fresh April save, but only 3 superior signal decoders. Similar ratios for rare, uncommon and common ones: some ~50...100 items of particular rarity per 1 signal decoder of that rarity found.
-- suggestion: increase signal decoders' drop ratio by 300%...500%, see how it goes. To compensate, reduce signal decoders' price proportionally (so it wouldn't be too much of "easy money" to just sell them to shops).

- issue: coil guns are massively inefficient against fighter-sized and smaller targets at ~800+ meters range.
-- suggestion: give coil guns a big accuracy buff. As it is now, they provide tolerable hit rate only at short distance - but then, coil gun's DPS is insufficient to be preferred over much higher-DPS short range weaponry. And at medium distance, beam laser is much better than coilguns - times better with good aim, and is also a hitscan weapon, like coil guns. To compensate for coil guns' accuracy buff - energy consumption could be much increased. So coilguns would become "very power hungry, but more range and damage" version of beam laser against most if not all kinds of targets.

- issue: rail guns charged shots are inferior (in DPS and energy usage) to their non-charged fire.
-- suggestion: re-shape rail gun charge bonus from linear increase to 500% at full charge - to non-linear increase: at 50% charge, does 250% damage; at 75% charge, does 500% damage; at 100% charge, does 1000% damage. This would solve two problems: 1st, that currently it's more DPS and energy-efficient to snap-shot railguns instead of charging them; 2nd, low player time's cost of missing some shots (when using rail gun in no-charge mode). Optimal usage mode would then become, most of the times, fully charged shots - missing which would be much undesirable. Which means, players will spend longer times aiming the shot while having rail gun fully charged (for which time, there is no energy regen), which will compensate much of this damage increase. Base damage of railguns could be reduced somehat to further compensate. In addition, this change would make railguns more of the "one shot - one kill" weapon, which traditionally sniper weapons are expected to be by players. This would also make railgun's full-charge multiplier closer to what it was in ES1 (iirc, 1200%).

- issue: pulse lasers' projectiles look a bit too thick ("wide"), particularly in photo mode.

- issue: high-pitched weapon sounds are irritating to quite many players.
-- explanation: neurology studies have demonstrated that sounds with large proportion of frequences being between 2000 and 5000 Hz - activate human brain region known as "amygdala", which is usually associated with fear and aggression. Which, researches believe, explains why series of such sounds frequently cause discomfort and/or fear and/or panic in humans.
-- suggestion: try lower-pitch sound effects for gauss cannons, coil guns and rail guns. Perhaps 1...2 octaves lower. Then, sound timbre and other sound effects (reverb, etc) can be changed for those sound effects, to make them much different to Flak and such. For rail guns, maybe even more than two octaves pitch drop - big hits are often associated with bass sounds. "Biiig bada boom" thing.

- issue: flak cannon is too weak.
-- observation: many players reports this, not just me.
-- suggestion: increase rate of fire for flaks. Given this weapon's significant spread, mediocre DPS and "wanna make a wall against incoming enemies!" nature, and available features to improve ship's energy reserves and/or efficiency - it'd have its niche then. Proportional increase in energy consumption would by itself compensate this RoF buff.

- issue: beam laser's reticle (shape of it) is weird.
-- observation: ES1's beam laser reticle is way better. Given precision nature of beam lasers, reticle for it is best be as minimalistic as at all possible, enabling players to aim beam lasers pixel-precisely with most ease.

- issue: missile defense system often fails to clear one or two mines in a small minefield (typically during mine sweeper jobs) due to insufficient range (300m).
-- suggestion: increase its range to 400...500 meters.

- issue: teleporter's "scurry" mode is unpredictable.
-- explanation: who likes to drive a car which has unpredictable gearbox? Not too many people i know... If any.
-- suggestion: replace current "scurry"'s effect with "adds an extra charge". Plain, simple, reliable.

- issue: EMP generator's "short circuit" mode is pretty useless.
-- explanation: often, targets have no shields at all. Also, there are great many other things which do all sorts of shield damage, many at much higher range than EMP generator.
-- suggestion: change "Short Circuit" mode to "stuns all enemies without active shields for additional X seconds", where X is subject to balancing. This will allow more effect combinations for various compositions of enemy groups, in compare to its current effect. Plus, unlike shield damage, it'd be quite unique effect in itself. Further, it's generally more fitting to "crowd control / defensive" nature of EMP generator device.

- issue: Resistance stat is arguably one of the two least useful ship stats.
-- suggestion: maybe adding "collision damage resistance: X%" as its 3rd effect would be good? There are some devices and perks working with collision damage and possibly ramming enemies, which this would help with.

- issue: Structure stat's module damage resistance gain is way too low. At +1823% hull bonus (866 Structure), module damage resistance is only at +18.6%.
-- explanation: this is massively insufficient to make module damage resistance bonus practically appealing.
-- suggesiton: make module damage resistance scale asymptotically towards some significantly high figure (perhaps 90% at maximum by-engine possible Structure value), with ~1000 of the stat already providing some ~50% module damage resistance.

I disagree with this. I am currently using a level 15 flak, and it destroys any lvl15 drone with 1 shot. Snipers need 3.
At most, flak gun is worse against armor and big ships like the destroyer.
I would advise it another way- fix the Flak's area damage, so it can destroy missiles (it can't destroy any missile in flight, currently), like it does with mines. Give it proper splash damage, a bit smaller than a mine.
That's the main purpose of a flak- barrage fire. Clear mines, missiles, turrets on ships, drones, and deal damage to unarmored ships.
It's not an armor-piercing round. It's supposed to be a shrapnel blast activated by proximity or impact.

BUT, instead of the weird gauss gun, one could have a proper mid-range anti-armor weapon. Slow firing, like the flak, but with AP munition that could really wreck any armor of a ship, and incinerate hull for 1, 2 seconds. I'd call it the JAGER!

I don't see how you actually "disagree", though. Because, the change i suggested - does not increase Flak damage per shot. Exactly because i observed same things you did.

As for "mid-range anti-armor weapon", that's Autocannon. Yes, it's not slow rate of fire, but it eats armor just fine, and with Marksman mod can be ~1.5 km range, otherwise 1.2 km. Solid weapon as it is.

Edit: and about "Jager" - i found it now; there is a pulse laser type weapon in ES2 even now called "Jaeger". It's its name in big white letters right there, and it can drop from enemies in Ceto, in particular in the location with the gate to Union system. It is minimum spread pulse laser subtype, merged tech of Berger's Group and Salvor Armament Group. Sorry, name's busy indeed.

It's cool, we're just giving our opinions and ideas.
Your suggestion for the flak was increasing the rate of fire. Mine was fixing the area damage.

Regarding the autocannon, it really works as anti-armor by the way armor works in the game. Still, I would love to see a different piercing beast. Maybe it could add a bit of force impact that made ships stagger or roll around for 1 second.

I think I found that pulse laser once. I dismantled it. It was pretty good against the Okkar Corvettes in Everspace 1