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[Grievous69]

I'll do my best not to repeat what was already said numerous times but the forums have been so active it's impossible to read everything.

So, while I agree with what most said about colonies and crazy incomes, I actually like the pace in this one. The fact that I already went through early game so many times and almost got sick of it may be the case, but I think new players also appreciate having multiple things to experiment with, relatively quickly after they start a game. Also if the game had such a glacier slow pace as many suggest, I'd probably stop playing for a long period of time after one playthrough. It's nice to be really invested but then it gets to the point where every bad thing that happens in game, seems even worse and players get more frustrated since they spent so much time grinding.

1) Colonies: One thing that really bothers me with colonies is free port, either I'm in deep red, or rolling in 250k income. The difference really needs to be smaller. Other than that, it feels great not having to worry
    where to get ships and supplies and not having to suck up to a faction just to have a functional fleet. Also please don't make only low hazard planets profitable, it's ridiculously stupid to find a decent planet and involves
    way too much luck.

2) Weapons: Dear god what happened with weapons this patch... I swear one time I went trough 5 core world military markets just to find one Vulcan cannon, it was easier to fing a Railgun, no joke. I get the rarity
    thing, having us experiment with builds on the spot but it's ridiculous not to have the very basics.

3) Blueprints: Easily the thing that consumed most of my time during the playthrough. Initially, I haven't had the salvage skill so I got pretty much nothing in half the sector. Only rare things were Doom, Tempest
    and Locust launcher. It got to the point where my size 8 colony didn't have a single capital ship because I couldn't find one for the life of me. So I put 2 points in salvage, and whaddya know Astral and Tachyon lance in
    the same system. After that never found another blueprint in 2 hours. Now, I understand it's all rng and we can't get every single piece of tech. But there needs to be a guaranteed blueprint in systems with a lot of
    planets to avoid flying around for an hour over 15 systems and not finding a damn thing (even with salvage 2). Either that or get rid of duplicates because I have 10 Luddic packs and 9 Missile packs.

4) Hyperspace storms: Such irony that the change was intented to make hyperspace more interactive and not so boring and it turned out the most obnoxious thing ever because there are so frickin many of them.
    In the end you're either gonna plow through like a maniac and say bye bye to supplies, or go around and again lose supplies because detours are so damn long. Only thing that's good is speeds over 20 not costing fuel
    but fuel is only a resource in the early game so meh.

5) Overall balance of ships and weapons: Others also pretty much covered this extensively so I'm just gonna add how much fun Doom is to fly now. I even bring it on blueprint hunts 

Sorry for being majorly negative since this post would be triple in length if I started to talk about things I like. Anyways I seriously can't remember the last time I sank so many hours in a game and enjoyed it this much. Phenomenal work as always Alex, keep up the great work  . Can't wait to see what else you got in store for us.

[Megas]

Re: Salvaging
In my game, max Salvaging would have been a waste.  I would have found more duplicate Pirate and Ludd packs, and more synchrotrons and corrupted nanoforges.  I would have found Eagle, Astral, heavy blaster blueprints, and an alpha core, with max salvaging that I would not find without it, but then again I would have never found pristine nanoforge if I had max Salvaging instead of none.  I tested with both unskilled and max Salvaging, and while I did get more rare items, they were mostly duplicates (or more cores when I did not want to use them, foolish me).  With unskilled, I got better quality drops and fewer duplicates despite having somewhat fewer rare items.

Salvaging is not reliable enough to get what I really want.  It will give more vendor trash and the preliminary survey ability, if nothing else.

In the end, I have resigned to raiding factions for blueprints once I am strong enough.

The only important drops are blueprints, and those are too rare, except for Pirate and Ludd packs which I do not want.

Re: Storms
I frequently and deliberately plow through storms like a maniac and do not care about the supply cost (or if I do, I put Solar Shielding on ships if I have it) because I love the extra speed, and it saves fuel if you can go beyond 20 for a significant amount of time.

[Grievous69]

Yea it's kinda silly that not having enough luck forces you to go ham on a major faction just so you can use decent ships in your fleet as well in your patrols. I also should add that I didn't find a single Synchrotron or a pristine Nanoforge in my now 70% (more or less) explored sector. As you said, blueprints are soooo important since default ships and weapons don't even deserve to be called that. Someone already mentioned this not a long ago, by the time you get a blueprint for a ship or a weapon it'll be basically useless since its effectiveness drops to almost zero in late game. Good example is Scarab, it makes sense it's a super rare ship but you're not gonna use them to assault a space station or fight expeditions. Sure you can put one if your fleet just for fluff but then you're just gimping yourself. Maybe a good solution to this is to have rare ship blueprints be a reward for a mission, so that you have a certain way to get them. Obviously it'll be silly to have them from the start so that goes out of the window.

[Sutopia]

Re: Colony
I think it's separate issue for free port and hazard rating.
Hazard rating is unimportant RNG as long as you know what you should be looking for (i.e. orange main stars)
Free port, on the other hand, is giving too much for almost no cost, making them just "turn on for money" cheat switch.

Re:Blueprint
Try raid major faction. I got every blueprint in every playthrough just stealth raiding em.
If you get lucky, you can get 5 blueprint in one single run. Plus, the factions don't just "die", they can be raided infinite times until you get everything.
The planetary op skill also increase your own colony's defense so it's much more useful than hoping RNG bring you anything in salvaging.

[code99]

3) Blueprints: Easily the thing that consumed most of my time during the playthrough. Initially, I haven't had the salvage skill so I got pretty much nothing in half the sector. Only rare things were Doom, Tempest
    and Locust launcher. It got to the point where my size 8 colony didn't have a single capital ship because I couldn't find one for the life of me. So I put 2 points in salvage, and whaddya know Astral and Tachyon lance in
    the same system. After that never found another blueprint in 2 hours. Now, I understand it's all rng and we can't get every single piece of tech. But there needs to be a guaranteed blueprint in systems with a lot of
    planets to avoid flying around for an hour over 15 systems and not finding a damn thing (even with salvage 2). Either that or get rid of duplicates because I have 10 Luddic packs and 9 Missile packs.

Idk, i must have been lucky because in my past 2 playthroughs I have found most of what I needed (capital ship blueprints such as paragon, pristine nanoforges, synchrotrons etc) without investing into salvaging skill.
Then again, I mostly do exploration because its what I like so I do it a lot. Yes, pristine nanoforges, synchrorons and some capital ship blueprints are rare and I feel thats ok. The pace at which you gain these items should be low imo.

4) Hyperspace storms: Such irony that the change was intented to make hyperspace more interactive and not so boring and it turned out the most obnoxious thing ever because there are so frickin many of them.
    In the end you're either gonna plow through like a maniac and say bye bye to supplies, or go around and again lose supplies because detours are so damn long. Only thing that's good is speeds over 20 not costing fuel
    but fuel is only a resource in the early game so meh.

This. Storms are sooo frkn annoying. The thing is, I dont want storms to be removed, instead, reduce their frequency and also make the massive clouds/nebulaes around the map smaller or make paths through them. Some clouds (imma call em clouds from now on) are just way too massive. I tried to go around one at one point and I think i used up WAY more supplies and fuel than by going through it. Instead of making hyperspace more fun/interactive, all the storms do at this point is make it really annoying.

I mostly just go trough them and call it a day. I bring more supplies than I need normally just so i can ignore this feature.

[Grievous69]

Re:Blueprint
Try raid major faction. I got every blueprint in every playthrough just stealth raiding em.
If you get lucky, you can get 5 blueprint in one single run. Plus, the factions don't just "die", they can be raided infinite times until you get everything.
The planetary op skill also increase your own colony's defense so it's much more useful than hoping RNG bring you anything in salvaging.

Just tried this, went to raid Sindria with all ships that I have, loaded with supplies and marines (over 1000) yet it said raid effectiveness is only 35%. I thought to myself, well it can't be that bad. And of course all I got was a few weapons and a Mining pod LPC. Think I need to do another playthrough, clearly my luck stat in Starsector is the same as irl.

[Reinhark]

Re:Blueprint
Try raid major faction. I got every blueprint in every playthrough just stealth raiding em.
If you get lucky, you can get 5 blueprint in one single run. Plus, the factions don't just "die", they can be raided infinite times until you get everything.
The planetary op skill also increase your own colony's defense so it's much more useful than hoping RNG bring you anything in salvaging.

Just tried this, went to raid Sindria with all ships that I have, loaded with supplies and marines (over 1000) yet it said raid effectiveness is only 35%. I thought to myself, well it can't be that bad. And of course all I got was a few weapons and a Mining pod LPC. Think I need to do another playthrough, clearly my luck stat in Starsector is the same as irl.

You might want to glass the ground defense and star fortress with tactical bombardment before raiding. This usually cut def points to 300ish thereby increasing raid effectiveness to 300ish give or take.(without repeated raiding penalties)

[Sutopia]

Re:Blueprint
Try raid major faction. I got every blueprint in every playthrough just stealth raiding em.
If you get lucky, you can get 5 blueprint in one single run. Plus, the factions don't just "die", they can be raided infinite times until you get everything.
The planetary op skill also increase your own colony's defense so it's much more useful than hoping RNG bring you anything in salvaging.

Just tried this, went to raid Sindria with all ships that I have, loaded with supplies and marines (over 1000) yet it said raid effectiveness is only 35%. I thought to myself, well it can't be that bad. And of course all I got was a few weapons and a Mining pod LPC. Think I need to do another playthrough, clearly my luck stat in Starsector is the same as irl.

You need around 4k marines to raid Sindria effectively due to starbase and size 7 tanking it's ridiculous defense value.
It's basically dumb to ever raid them for the fact that the only unique blueprint they hold is conquest.
You can easily raid tri-tachyon or hegemony since their shipyard is only size 5 posting decently low defense value.

[Megas]

You do not need Planetary Operations if you can bring enough marines and Colossus 3's or Valkyries for 7000 or so attack.  If you have the skill anyway for +2 stability, okay, that means you do not need as many marines and ships.

All you need for blueprint raiding is enough to exceed the 40% threshold if all you care about are blueprints (and/or their synchrotron or nanoforge).  In fact, the lower the percentage, the better because you do not kill stability as much, which means more frequent blueprint raids.  At 40%, it only lowered their stability by about 1.  Good.  Close to 100%, -3 stability, no good (because I need to wait longer for their stability to recover).  All more percentage does is give you more vendor trash and lower their stability more, which you do not want if you only want blueprints.

And you can save-scum at the planet until it coughs up a blueprint you want.  Getting a blueprint from a raid is not easy, unless you can save-scum, and you can!

[Draba]

4) Hyperspace storms: Such irony that the change was intented to make hyperspace more interactive and not so boring and it turned out the most obnoxious thing ever because there are so frickin many of them.
    In the end you're either gonna plow through like a maniac and say bye bye to supplies, or go around and again lose supplies because detours are so damn long. Only thing that's good is speeds over 20 not costing fuel
    but fuel is only a resource in the early game so meh.

100% with you, the core mechanic would be interesting if used sparingly but they are friggin everywhere
Also dislike that you only get most exotic blueprints when there is no point in using them.

I tested with both unskilled and max Salvaging, and while I did get more rare items, they were mostly duplicates (or more cores when I did not want to use them, foolish me).  With unskilled, I got better quality drops and fewer duplicates despite having somewhat fewer rare items.

Salvaging is not reliable enough to get what I really want.  It will give more vendor trash and the preliminary survey ability, if nothing else.

Alex said distribution of blueprints is exactly the same with/without salvaging, you just get 50% more(so what it says on the tin).
With you on the base sentiment, a way to target would be nice.

[Megas]

Alex said distribution of blueprints is exactly the same with/without salvaging, you just get 50% more(so what it says on the tin).
With you on the base sentiment, a way to target would be nice.

In my case, that mostly meant duplicate Pirate and Ludd packs, synchrotrons, and corrupted nanos and more gamma/beta cores, maybe one alpha.  For me, the number of genuinely useful items that I could have gotten with max Salvaging over none can be counted on one hand, and I prefer the pristine nanoforge from my unskilled than a few more blueprints I will eventually acquire just by raiding factions enough.

At least multiple heavy industries can stack for faster production of capitals or a big fleet, so there is never enough pristine nanoforges, if you want to produce a whole lot of stuff (like an entire fleet if you wipe) quickly.

[Grievous69]

Thx for the tips guys, totally forgot about softening defenses.

Alex said distribution of blueprints is exactly the same with/without salvaging, you just get 50% more(so what it says on the tin).
With you on the base sentiment, a way to target would be nice.

Man, if that's the case that it doesn't really seem that useful now.

[Megas]

I do not even bother with their planetary defenses, just bring more marines and Ground Support ships.

[Draba]

Thx for the tips guys, totally forgot about softening defenses.

Alex said distribution of blueprints is exactly the same with/without salvaging, you just get 50% more(so what it says on the tin).
With you on the base sentiment, a way to target would be nice.

Man, if that's the case that it doesn't really seem that useful now.

I meant you get 50% more blueprints with the same general distribution, so 50% more rolls to get any single one you are after.
Probably what you mean, just realized wording was pretty poor on my part.

Did try a max salvaging/colony management run but did not like it that much.
Extra cores do help if you want multiple colonies, forges/synchrotrons aren't that rare or I was just lucky so always had enough even without the skill.