[Suggestions] A bit of feedback from my latest playthrough

[pittlebelge]

So, after spending quite a few hours on a new playthrough in the latest beta (I just finished the crisis event), I have a bit of feedback that is not beta specific.

First a little QOL thingy: When using the guidance to an object or point in space feature, it would be really nice to be able cancel the guidance without having to open the map. For example, by being able to see the cancel guidance item when right clicking the yellow guidance indicator (the square) in the cockpit or external view.

Next, I really enjoy having a nice range of ship for my personal use, and of course I like to max them out with equipment mods. The availability of the exceptional weapon chamber is really low. Except for a couple of plot situations, I just can't get my hands on them. The only missions that I found offering them as reward are war related (Terran vs Xenon, etc) and since one usually need many of those mods to improve the main armament of a ship and I have many ships to upgrade, I end up ignoring the grind and not really engaging with those missions. The time invested vs reward feels too great. It wouldn't take much tweaking to make those parts a bit more frequent (for example as a guaranteed drop for a Xenon I)

Finally, the big item. I find that I don't use any ai controlled combat ship until I have a nice self sufficient shipyard/wharf or at least an economic setup that prints money to the point that I can just buy whatever I want. Until that point in my playthrough, I do all the fighting by myself because the cost of losing a ship is just too great and feels like too much of a setback. Furthermore, using the AI to do some shooting looses on police rewards that are very useful to climb up the economic ladder in the early to mid game. I understand that I could just force myself to get a couple of wingman and go around helping the miners against the Kha'ak, but what's the point? They would lose me money by not getting the police rewards and I'd risk losing them. I feel like the game is encouraging me to stay on my own until the point where money is irrelevant. Maybe having cheap fighters as rewards for missions and having the ability to purchase a police licence that my wingman can benefit from would help, but there may be other ways to make it more appealing to use wingman and little fleets. As it is now, if I just have a couple of millions in my pocket, getting a couple more mining ships is a no brainer in terms of financial investment and that stays the case until I can get my hands on a good capital ship.

[gbjbaanb]

You can cancel guidance, deselect your target and then ctrl+G guidance to it. This sets guidance to nothing.

The better mods can be found by shooting up certain ships, I get mine generally by taking out Duke's Bucanneers ships, I'm not sure if that's the only place they drop.

[Daemonjax]

> Finally, the big item. I find that I don't use any ai controlled combat ship until I have a nice self sufficient shipyard/wharf or at least an economic setup that prints money...

Really? I'm the opposite -- I jump into combat and start capturing xenon ships just minutes into the game (public beta 7 feature, I know). I then use the captured S/M ships to camp all the xenon gates (from the relative safety of nearby station turrets). I use some of the M's to make boatloads of cash by transfering deplaoyables from equipment docks to the same faction's wharfs (they must WANT me to do that, right? Because the price differences can be huge)-- the PE's (their weak M class ship) can hold 100 of whatever. For captured miners, I have them mine nividium solo without protection. I spread them out in different sectors (kak' are really only a problem for mining fleets, not solo ships that spend little time in system actually mining) and just manually tell them to sell when full when I remember to check. Pirate threatens your mining ship? Sweet -- more chances for a capture. Their sale value is bad, so if they get blown up I don't really care. There's zero startup costs -- can easily capture PE's in whatever combat starter ship minutes into the game without upgrades.

Your combat ships can force ships to bail even when you're not in sector -- happens a lot. Sometimes (not super often) those ships are loaded with deployables for more easy cash.

But even in 6.2, I would still do something like the above (because it's fun for me)... I'd just have to buy all the ships (but baiting pirates helped), so I'd need to get one faction standing to 10 asap to get rolling (which isn't hard). 6.2 (last time I played) had WAY higher drop rates of spaceflies and other expensive things from xenons, so that kinda compensated for lack for ship captures, but 7.0 seems more balanced.


Just different playstyles, I guess. But the game definitely supports a more aggressive start (fight), and also, as you've found, a more passive one (trade/build). But both require thinking to exploit the game mechanics. Which is cool. I'm sure you have plenty of tips and tricks up your sleeve for your trade/build start. If you want to do the more aggressive thing earlier (because you think it'd be more fun) just do it!

[pittlebelge]

Really? I'm the opposite -- I jump into combat and start capturing xenon ships just minutes into the game (public beta 7 feature, I know). I then use the captured S/M ships to camp all the xenon gates (from the relative safety of nearby station turrets). I use some of the M's to make boatloads of cash by transfering deplaoyables from equipment docks to the same faction's wharfs (they must WANT me to do that, right? Because the price differences can be huge)-- the PE's (their weak M class ship) can hold 100 of whatever. For captured miners, I have them mine nividium solo without protection. I spread them out in different sectors (kak' are really only a problem for mining fleets, not solo ships that spend little time in system actually mining) and just manually tell them to sell when full when I remember to check. Pirate threatens your mining ship? Sweet -- more chances for a capture. Their sale value is bad, so if they get blown up I don't really care. There's zero startup costs -- can easily capture PE's in whatever combat starter ship minutes into the game without upgrades.

That's fair enough. I've not tried exploiting the new Xenon bail mechanic that much. Though I did notice that while doing the Yaki plot, I left a lot of lasertowers in a Xenon sector for a long time and ended up with a neat pile of ships to claim. And yeah, I know about the deployable trade but it really feels like an exploit to me, but that just personal preference.

But here is perhaps a better illustration of the issue I'm referring to. I just started a little Boron-only playthrough and last time I did that, I tried to get the Ray asap, so for a change I went for a Guppy this time. Got the little carrier and a bunch of Mako to go with it, all nice and good. The issue is that the enemy that my fighters kill bring no rep and no money. The end result is that all progression becomes slower. I usually rely on mining ship escort mission or gate camping to get cash and reputation quickly, but only your own personal kills matter when it comes to those rewards. So, I ended up with a much larger investment (capital ship + the fighter wings) and it just slows down the progression of my playthrough. What I'd like to have is a good reason to bring AI ship in combat with me during the early to mid game. It doesn't have to be a carrier either, just a couple of S sized wingman could be fun and make for interesting engagements.

Don't get me wrong, I do use AI ships for a variety of duties in the early game, like mapping down sectors, laying down satellites and resource probe and all the economic stuff, but not combat, I don't think they are worth it (Xenon bail farming aside as it stands in the beta).

So, here is another way to phrase it: on the empire building side of things, there is a smooth progression from the start to the end of the game, but on the combat side of things, it's not that smooth. I just get bigger and bigger ships for my personal use and never invest in anything else until 100 hours later, when I get to the economic endgame and print half a dozen Asgards and carriers filled to the brim with top tier fighters. Right now, I wouldn't consider buying a couple of fighters to escort my first corvette, or get a few corvette to go with my first destroyer.

[rudi_pioneer]

I experienced same with ships/combat, and when I went mod route I got mod that auto re-buys destroyed carrier fighters, and another where police license gives bounty reward to any ship I own. That made combat progression fun and reasonable.

[alexthespaniard]

I am with you on the topic of rewards for eliminating Xenon or other enemies. I would even understand if they lowered the reward. But the truth is that they should give a reward not only when you fight.

One of the solutions I proposed is that the factions have 'attack events' when they have their attack fleets ready (also considering the faction's attitude). When they decide to attack, a dynamic mission should appear that rewards you for joining the attack on the target, whether it's a station or a fleet, and pays you for destroyed elements.

On the other hand, they should add taxes in the sectors that are collected when you own them. This gives a sense to geopolitical warfare. Nowadays, owning a sector only means painting the map.All this new features could be offset by personnel costs.

That would give life to the pirates, who could avoid paying taxes at the risk of being intercepted by the police