Amazing update for an amazing game. There are so many new hooks (buildings! slots within buildings! custom production!) that the possibilities for additional gameplay through mods or ongoing development makes me salivate.
A few comments, in no order in particular. This is coming from two most-games (as in up to level 35-45 in each, with a healthy empire going).
Does the underlying simulation tie into what the default AI-controlled markets offer for sale? If so, I am seeing some signs that entire sector economy takes a nosedive beginning right around when you start a new game. While that may be intended, the overall quality of weapons/LPCs/ships starts off significantly above equilibrium at the beginning.
- Markets - both open and black - seem to offer better stuff at the very beginning of the game. Particularly noticeable in terms of energy weapons and high-tech LPCs (the dual Atropos and Reaper torpedo bombers) at smaller, non-military markets. This inventory disappears within a few months and never appears again.
- The first expedition fleet sent against my colony in a game where I started a colony early on was a pristine Diktat fleet with two Conquests and almost no D-mods. No subsequent fleet has been as good from both the ship quality and quantity perspective. This is purely anecdotal though, as I haven't played multiple early colonization starts...
This may also lead to the "markets are emptier than they should be" issue. In the early colonization game, this also led to a dynamic where the first attack set the benchmark for what I could possibly expect, and the difficulty level would only decrease after that initial fleet.
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I do think there's some funkiness around rolling for rare loot, as per Megas's earlier comments.
- Are you certain that the rare loot salvage skill does not cause weightings to change, specifically around blueprints? In one game, I went full salvage and exploration right off the bat. Due to the overwhelming amount of stuff to do, I did not get around to the story mission for the technology cache, so all rare items have been found organically. That fleet has a dozen nanoforges and synchrotron cores, a couple dozen AI cores, pretty much every hullmod, and yet has only managed to find the Luddic Path blueprint package... twice.
- Extremely low sample size for this, but there may also be a weird interaction with repeat/incomplete fights against dormant Remnant fleets. I did the "second in command" option against a small fleet and it took three separate attempts to fully wipe out the defending fleet. Each post-fight salvage report included the same rare loot. The lowest level AI core, to be clear, so not that rare, but I ended up with three of them from a defending fleet of four or five small Remnant ships.
I think rare loot should only roll on the first attempt; in any case, the "keep salvaging until literally nothing comes out" is not ideal behavior, but people will end up doing it if blueprints are what are at stake.
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Random final thoughts:
- In early game fights where I did not have sabots, I kept seeing sabot explosions appear against enemy ships? This was early enough in the game that I definitely did not have Longbows and I tend not to use sabots normally, plus in some cases I am pretty sure I saw no missile, just the sabot cone appearing out of thin air. (I mean, that explosion is pretty distinctive, or am I overlooking a visually similar weapon?)
- Colony economics are a bit weird right now. As other have said, they can ramp up to make too much money too quickly. Maybe limit construction to one item at a time, increase the up-front costs, or both?
- Is it intended that star systems can spawn with zero "stable locations"? I pretty much abandoned by first game as a result of that, since flying 20- days round trip to get intel updates was becoming cumbersome. (This game was also hit by the issue where a pirate base would spawn continuously in the closest star system that had stable locations, so any attempt at using those for a comm relay would get taken by the pirates almost immediately.)