Having played through the game a few times, and having done the two story missions, I have come to the point where I can safely say I have "completed" the game, or what is there currently. With attempts to doing more silly buggery stuff being effectively stone walled by the current mechanics within the game. Even attempts to make an over whelming economy in the game is met with resistance. So with this post, I hope to make a large number of clearly defined suggestions as to help improve the current mechanics within the game, well also being as reasonable with them as possible. (No suggestions of "Make a never ending procedural generation of the universe with an infinite number of factions and ship designs!", as that would be silly and impossible.)
I would say to start off any suggestions, I need to first say what currently works well, so in a nice list here we go:
Spoiler
Ship flux: It is wonderful as is, the flux system adds a nice amount of management that allows even the biggest ships to be dropped by a few small ships, provided they can keep the pressure up and managed their own flux generation, solid system.
Ship combat: The combat in the game is fun and a learning curve, but once you find either the ship that clicks for you, or learn a ship, you can become deadly enough to out skill numerous other ships just by your self, which is to say, pretty damn awesome.
Ship design: It is pretty robust as is, and allows for some unique setups to your liking.
The factions: In concept, they are perfectly fine, they vary in how they operate, and naturally, pirates work as the under dog force, that you can turn in the most OP faction in game by mistake. I love it.
Now, that is not to say the rest of the systems in the game are bad, or terrible at all, just in need of tweaks. So from here, I hope to go through each of the core systems and suggesting improvements that can be made.
The economy
Spoiler
With out question, the economy is what this game is based upon. Everything revolves around it, as it should and the basic setup of the economy works well. However, the economy in the game has a number of weaknesses also. To give a quick list of them, then break it down will likely help make it clear as to what the weaknesses are.
1. The economy in the game does not scale.
2. The economy is detached from what fleets are actually doing
3. The economy lacks demand
4. The economy lacks useless items
With a quick list out of the way, let's clearly define what I mean by each one then suggest ways to fix it.
1. The economy in star sector does not scale. I know some people will be quick to say it technically does, but frankly, the rate it scales is beyond slow, and will eventually cap out at a not so far distance from where it started. For instance, even as you colonize more and more planets, the actual scale of the market more often than not does not change, as you, as the player are liable to make sure all your planet's demands are met, and then go about expanding your own production to consume all the other markets. Once the player's own faction demands are met, you are only left with the option of out producing the AI factions, and pretty much capping out the market to your favor. Because the value of a market will rarely every change, once you hit the aforementioned point, that is it.
So, how do you fix this issue? Make the AI expand when there are surpluses of vital goods on the market. The more variety of vital goods for a colony, the higher the chance the AI will attempt to colonize new planets. With the addition of new planets will come more demand in the market for various goods.
2. The economy in the game seems detached from what fleets are doing. Even as the fleet numbers in the game start to skyrocket, the consumption of the various resources these fleets need seems to remain unchanged. The only fleet in the game that seems to need resources to operate is the player's own fleet. Whats more, the trade ships seem to have little impact on what is going on planet side, other than if a trade fleet gets blown up then a colony gets an x% modifier in import resource loss. This leaves the AI, or even the player's own faction to field hundreds upon hundreds of ships, at no resource cost.
How to fix this? The obvious choice is make all fleets take x amount of resources for a faction to field it and keep it up, but I would think cpu wise that could quickly become brutal. Instead, a more general system where in, each faction gets so many points towards fleets based upon what it can afford to field be it via in faction production, or through imports and as a faction fields more ships, the quantity of goods in its market related to ships, decreases. This would, in theory, allow for a system in which during peace time, a faction would likely have a surplus of say fuel and supplies, but during war time where they need more of both, the demand for such goods would sky rocket, as to field more ships for war. By making the demand of fuel and supplies attached to a faction instead of individual fleets, I would think that would help massively performance wise, well also making a faction's fleets mean something. Though, if it could be done per individual fleet, that would be much better, as you could starve out a faction's fleets indirectly killing them, by say, chasing them across the galaxy until they completely run out of supplies to function.
3. The economy in the game lacks demand. Pretty much every planet can produce everything with few exceptions. Raw resources are one thing, that honestly, are not hard to meet the demand of with a few planets, and are common enough to be a non-issue. But beyond that with refineries, fuel production, light industry, and heavy industry, you can do that literally anywhere, and all the industries benefit from a massive population, which turns into, stick the buildings that want certain resources where you produce those resources, then work on cranking that population to level 10. Frankly, I have yet to see anyone that really does normal trading for profit, aside from the quests to do so.
The solution I see to this issue is simple, yet likely, complex to actually do. Primary industries (food, ore, raw fuel) and secondary industry (refineries, light industries) need to be separate. Wherein the primary industries do well on low population worlds, where naturally they would have a lot more space to do their thing and the secondary industries excel on larger populations. with a natural scaling debuff for both colonies that have incorrect industries. Naturally, this would have to allow planets to become population capped at certain levels by the player or Ai. But with this system, it would force small mining colonies to export their ore to core worlds, and import goods from them, forcing trade, and a more reliable market. But, the other side of it too is the tax system currently in place, in that it needs to scale. The more a good is needed, the lower the tax on it, the less the good is needed, the higher the tax, as this would give an incentive to trade ships to bring in the desired goods, and turn a healthy profit from it, well avoiding abuse of some simple trade route. But to also counter possible unplanned abuse, implement a system where in if a fleet is constantly making a lot of profit going between two planets or so, make the pirates become a lot more interested in them. By giving different planet sizes the ability to produce certain goods effectively, you can get a strong trade network going, that will allow the player to also reek more havoc on the system by taking out trade ships bringing goods to core worlds, or the other way around. With that being said, core worlds (high population worlds) by nature should be juggernauts of industry that are completely incapable of supplying themselves with the basic resources to survive, needing perhaps even multiple other worlds just to supply their demands of raw goods, be it ore or food. But at the same time as being monstrous in their demands for resources, they are also fortresses, being able to spew out fleets and marines to defend themselves and an invested interest to protect their suppliers when needed. With a system like that, taking out a core world would be a war worthy to tell stories about, but at the same time, the weakness of the core worlds is the worlds that supply them with raw goods. No raw goods coming in = chaos in the core world. That being said with populations and production, there should also be an incentive to focus worlds more on one industry type, rather than all of them. With a production bonus for worlds that specialize, and a decaying bonus with the more industries present. With the largest of worlds being able to host 2 industries optimally.
4. The economy lacks useless items, useless to the player that is, other than to trade. There is a distinct lack of items that only function to be consumed by a colony with no real gain, other than colony happiness. Be it a new colony, or one supporting billions, the people have effectively the same demands.
Solution wise, this one is much more simple. As colonies grow in population, they demand new resource types to just do the day to day, and naturally, new industries to compliment the new demands. For instance, a small mining colony would likely want imports of alcohol, heavy machinery, food, drugs, medical supplies and naturally to get this, the colony would export the ore it mines, in exchange, a massive core world may want food, medical supplies, recreational drugs (different from drugs), electronics, etc, with whatever that core world produces as the offering for trade.
The Factions
Spoiler
Without question, the factions are key to making much of this world, and premise wise, they work, functionally, not so much. To list the issues I have seen
1. Factions are largely stagnate
2. Factions don't really care what is going on
3. They lack desires
A clear break down on the issues and solutions:
1. Factions seem to remain stagnate in the game. They have more of a "I guess we are a thing" type personality. Game or lore wise, they seem to suggest they are progressing towards something, but you will only ever really see them stick around their worlds with a few patrols scanning anything that moves.
Solution? Factions need to have an invested interest in advancing their own affairs. They should be much more active in fighting pirates, rather than just running into them by chance, and by extension, they should be much more likely to hunt down people they dislike. No one going after a bounty they posted? Screw it, time to get the job done themselves. No one willing to scan a planet they want scanned? Time to take the matters into their own hand. Without question, factions should have an interest in getting their missions done if no one else will, rather than just forgetting about them.
2. Factions don't seem to care what is going on around them. Did the player just vaporize an entire faction, taking out their entire population and planets? Well, I guess if they saturated bombed their planet we will go to war. But I mean, let's just peace out with them 5 minutes later. Is a certain faction becoming overwhelming powerful in military power, or destroying our own market shares? Eh, screw it, who cares?
Solution factions should respond to things going on around them. If factions are getting overly powerful, then other factions should band together to beat them down, if their market is being destroyed, than an economic war should be started. When threats come knocking on their door, allies should be sought, because if they don't stand together despite the differences now, then there will be no one left to stand with them, when the enemy comes to their door.
3. Factions seem to have an over arching principle they want to complete, but they sure don't want to do it. For instance, the Hegemony wants to depopulate AIs for everywhere. But I have never seen them raid an area with AI fleets. Instead, they just stick to their few worlds, then come to complain at you every so often about AI cores.
Solution wise, factions should be much more active in trying to complete their objectives. Do they hate AIs? Time to hunt them down to the last! Do they hate technology? Time to cause chaos on core worlds via raids, sabotage! Without question, all the various factions should feel much more like players, trying to complete their goal instead of factions that only say they want to do X and never do.
Ships
Spoiler
Ships in the game are wonderfully varied, and offer a lot in the way of play styles for combat. Be it a nightmareish doom exploding things, and trying to avoid direct combat, a paragon tanking everything thrown at it, and dealing devastating damage at the expense of speed, or a simple frigate with speed with average everything. The list can go on. But notable weaknesses are:
1. Unclear weapon strengths
2. Low cost of ships
3. Ineffective ships
4. Reload worthy combat mechanics
The break down
1. Weapons in the game are varied, which is nice, but it can be unclear to what can be considered to be better. Various weapons serve various purposes, (Such as long range, and close range), yet are slumped together all the same under the same categories (ballistic for example), I have also noticed that weapons seem to have intended tiers at some point.
Solution, the weapons need to be better categorized beyond that of the "type" they are. with tiers being clearly defined. (A weapon commonly produced by pirates should not be on par with something made by say tri-tachyon.) Looking through the weapons on offer, most of the time is a mess of trial and error, so a more clear list of weapon tiers would help reduce the clutter of choosing the right weapons for your ship, with naturally the best weapons excelling in a specific area, compared to more average weapons, being average to mediocre in most things.
2. Ships in the game are pretty cheap most of the time. Both in terms of buying and selling. Cheap little corvette or frigate type ships should remain that, cheap. They are weak, and die like flies more often than not. But bigger, better ships, also seem to still be on the cheap size of things, like a paragon, capable of wiping fleets worth of frigates, yet honestly, not that much more expensive for the value you get out of it.
Solution, big ships, should be big time costly. The kind of thing you see in the market, and wish you could afford, because once you do get one, you will value it all the more. With that being said, capturing enemy ships after battle should also be a solid source of income, high risk, high reward.
3. Ineffective ships seems to mostly come from the larger ships. Strong sure, but a number of times, I have found something even like a paragon being lacking. Capital class ships by premise, should be nearly as dangerous as fully upgraded space stations. Capital ships are meant to be that, the primary ship of the fleet, the heavy hitter that can keep on fighting and fight through the toughest situations. Dropping a capital class ship should be note worthy and devastating to any fleet.
Solution revamp capital class ships to be the hard point in any battle field. Something that multiple battleships, or another capital class ship would have to go against to take down. Give them the shields, and weapons, to be monstrous, but at the same time, slow and weak to fighter sized ships. Thus, a single capital can't curb stomp entire fleets without some backup, but larger ships beware.
4. Reload combat mechanics, mostly come with the out of combat mechanics. Namely, the retreat mechanics, are abusable, by the AI. A number of times, I have had 2 or 3 fleets chasing after me, in a constant loop of having to "retreat" from battle every few seconds. Because as one fleet would deagro so I could run, another fleet would instantly catch up due to me being force to stop, and I would need to repeat the retreat, then the first, or a third fleet would catch up to me again, and I would have to do it again, so on so forth. I have covered quarter of a sector stuck in this loop, unable to do anything about it. Until my CR hits zero, and my ships just rip themselves apart.
Solution when a fleet retreats, it becomes invisible to all other fleets for a short duration.
Story
Spoiler
I consider the story in this game to be pretty secondary to the core mechanics, as mods will give a longer shelf life to this game than pretty much any story. But, for the purposes of story, I will also include the random missions. So, per usual, the issues:
1. Story missions make no sense
2. The rewards are lacking
The break down
1. We want you to go half way across the galaxy to survey one planet, then come back here mtay? Or, we want you to go half way across the galaxy to kill this one one guy hiding in the fringes of everything, don't question how they are surviving out there. This pretty sums up much of the missions you will see and raise more questions than answers.
Solution wise, missions need to make sense, instead of one planet, it should be a star system, or a series of stars close together. How on earth does a faction know a specific planet is in this star system that they have never been to? Whats more, the bounty missions need a bit of a rework. The obvious choice is bounty people belong to pirates, and the people being hunted would hang around their pirate brothers, perhaps in a beefed up ship, but none the less, alone. Well there may be more grand bounties for pirate lords, who have much more impressive fleets, and a lovely bounty that all factions donated into. (AKA a huge payout for killing.)
2. The rewards for these single planet surveys are honestly not worth it in my eyes. The fuel cost to get out to these planets, the material costs, to do the survey, then to get back again. Not to mention the risk of running into some AI ships in the system, all in all, make it not worth it.
Solution the distance from the core worlds should factor in to how much they payout. and bounties should work the same, expect instead of distance, it is the strength of the person with the bounty. (Bounty hunting should be more of a player with a lone ship, or a couple of ships hunting down a specific person's ship, rather than fleet battles, expect for the really large bounties.)
Game story wise, I can't say much beyond the random missions, as nothing is fleshed out there, but again, I would suggest not worrying about that for a long while as the basic mechanics are refined first.
As it stands, this is what comes to my head in the time being. More may come later, and I will add to this post as need be. I am curious about other thoughts on this subject, or if the dev can give insights to their thinking of these suggestions.
