What about adding an option to observe ongoing fights without necessarily joining in? Could help the galaxy feel more alive and I don't imagine it would need *too* much adjustment behind the scenes.
Would also be a nice way to see the ships in action from time to time without worrying about your own losses.
Just a random thought! Really looking forward to 0.8
That's pretty neat! A bit too gratuitous, probably, but still neat.
Plus combat really works a lot better when one of the ships and sides is player-controlled; it's really built with that in mind. You'd likely see some odd behavior from the AI etc if this isn't the case.
I was thinking, maybe it would be nice to have a good chunk of missions/bounties which take place locally, as opposed to sector-wide ones. Then you'd have the chance to accumulate wealth and ressources in preparation for far jouneys, which could be really expensive and relatively rare and special events.
"Locally" could mean the current system, or the current constellations, depending on what that means. What defines a constellation?
I guess it depends on what you mean by "locally" - the core worlds are in the middle of the Sector, so a lot of stuff will naturally be local to that relatively small area. I'd like expeditions outside that to really have more of an expedition feel, but I guess we'll have to see how it pans out. It's hard to talk about it without enough playtesting, of which there hasn't been much here. Need to get more exploration content in, some more REDACTED stuff, and then really take if for a spin, see how everything feels, and adjust accordingly.
Seems like the only reason to take this over LAG is shot range, which is a big deal admittedly. Matching range with Arbalest (and Railgun) means they probably compliment each other, good for Enforcer and Hammerhead.
it's got 220 dps (vs 160) and almost triple the per-shot damage, as well as considerably better flux efficiency, so it seems a pretty clear winner unless you want to shoot down fighters (in which case flak) or OPs are very tight. And then there's the range, as you say.