About 6 hours in now and I
finally have a non-terrible ship - in other words something bigger than a frigate. (Because I don't like those due to being spectacularly bad at flying them. I am the best at space!)
And it's not
too bad now. Enforcer; how I love thee....
But seriously this is really something that needs looking at.
Imagine a new player comes in, tries this and has to push themselves through several hours of the most frustrating and tedious space themed cat-and-mouse cargo simulator with added repeated reloading pleasure.
How many of those newbies are just going to drop it right there and never look back? Not everyone is a masochist.
One of the things I really liked about the previous release was that unless you did something obviously silly it was pretty easy to get yourself started by picking on small pirates and smugglers.
You could see where you were, where you needed to be, what was a threat, and what was a target. It was simple. It was pretty forgiving. And it really helped the game to get flowing much quicker.
My previous starts have had me up-and-running inside an hour. But this.... Was not a fun experience.
The real shame is that this whole sensor getup is probably one of the coolest things I have seen in a game for ages and I can see it being something fun to play with once you're established, but it just makes the early game such a total drag.
I flat dislike the burn boost though. It doesn't seem to add anything other than micromanagement and frustration, and the AI can spam it relentlesly without worrying about the fuel use.
(The AI will have lower CR though, but this doesn't matter if it's 12-on-1.)
I've noticed something odd about the delivery missions as well.
There are rather a lot of requests for organs. Sometimes the boards are almost entirely organs and one maybe two for something more mundane.
This seems a bit.... Not right.
A bit more variety, and some slightly less "tight" time limits on some contracts would make this feature more or less perfect. Include all the commodities as well, not just the finished goods.