In light of all the new changes (which I very much like, don't get me wrong) I find myself missing "the good old days" where the player had the true freedom to do basically whatever, whenever they wanted. I'm talking about way way back, before sectors and the like, when the map was one big warzone where every faction had a presence. The current systems changes make the game feel much more realistic, though the economy and bounty payoffs probably need tweaking. But, having tasted both sides, I miss the freedom of having everything all in one place. Regardless of how rich I am, sometimes I don't want to be worrying about how much profit an excursion across the galaxy is going to bring in. When I play the current version, easy as it may be to make money, I still feel like I'm on a hill the entire time, and if I stop going up, I'm going to start rolling down fast. I imagine most people don't feel this way however, so try and hear me out.
What I'm proposing is a sector, preferably in the middle of the system, where every faction has a presence and a small base. In order to make it feel "different," and not a locus where too many good things happen at once, I think it should not follow most of the set rules. What I mean is, no bounties, (or very small ones) especially the named ones, minimal trade, little or no sources of rep, (maybe just what you get for killing enemies with no bounties. That only goes up to like 10 or something right?) etc etc. What I don't think it should be, is a place where you go to make money.
This would be someplace you go to practice, or simply mess around, try out fleets, and have fun blowing things up. Hell, it could even be a special TYPE of sector, to more easily facilitate the different rules, and make it more accessible to modders and the like. Maybe it could be framed thematically wherein it has some kind of old auto factory or resource node in the center that can't be replicated, and that everyone wants. It could even be made into a sort of kind of the hill type activity where if one faction gets solid control for long enough, they get to ship out a special kind of resource to the rest of their stations around the system, and something could even be put in place to make sure they can't keep hold of it indefinitely. Maybe it could spit out increasingly larger fleets hostile only to the station (or whatever it is') current owners. This way, it would actually mean something, and have a tangible, interact-able effect on game play, both for traders and bounty hunters, as players could both influence the factions, and trade/smuggle/purchase/steal what the winning faction recieves. Or, it could be left entirely out of the big picture, so as to not have an effect on core gameplay at all.
I want to reiterate here that I don't have a problem with gameplay as it is, and I love to see this game grow. Its definitely one of the purchases I'm most happy with, and I'm glad to see how much attention it's development gets. The reason I suggested this as a core feature and not a mod, is because looking back on the old gameplay, I really feel that this would add something new and fun to the game, without taking away from what it has if implemented properly. And while I don't know too much about coding, I believe the core aspect of this idea (a sector where all factions have a presence, and that is exempt from bounties and possibly large scale trading) is not only fairly "cheap" coding wise, but easy to expand upon in the future.
This has been a fairly long post, so thank you for getting this far. I hope anyone reading this gives it consideration, as I tried to state it in such a way as to avoid most of the major things that it might interfere with.
