Here were my first impressions of Starfarer as a total newcomer. I stumbled onto the webpage entirely by chance, and the game seemed to have the exact type of gameplay I was looking for, so I bought it on a whim. The comments below are those of a person who had absolutely no prior expectations or knowledge about the game, having literally found it entirely by chance. Hopefully the developers find this type of feedback useful.
What I loved- The gameplay in Starfarer is superb. Too often, modern games excel at eye-candy but have poor gameplay. Starfarer has excellent gameplay while maintaining crisp, aesthetic graphics.
- The game concept of hardpoint-based ship customization combined with a persistent campaign is absolutely spot on, well done!
- The quality of the AI, especially when it comes to shield optimization, flux optimization, and using ship maneuverability to dodge is astoundingly good.
- The automatic crew optimization for maximum experience levels across the fleet really wowed me.
- The simulator in the refit screen is an exceptional feature.
- The interface was simple, clean, and everything was exactly where I would intuitively expect them to be.
- So much content already, and the Character, Officers and Outposts tabs are still to be implemented!
- I am no modder, but the modding support in Starfarer seems to be a major feature, and free content is always a plus for any user.
What I feel needs improvement- In the command screen, I would like to be able to designate my own ship grouping for rally points. Either that, or I want to be able to designate that a certain ship belongs to the Carrier Group, or the Civilian Group, for instance, even if they don't strictly belong there. If there is a way to do this already, it was not intuitive to me, as I still haven't found it.
- There is a huge opportunity to enhance faction identity through ship design and combat. As it stands Corporation and Hegemony ships are differentiated by Energy vs. Ballistic weapons. This is a great first step, but there is a lot of untapped potential here. It makes a slot of sense that many of the Corporation designs focus on frontal firepower, since this synergizes well with beam technology. However, Hegemony ships currently feel like Corporation ships but with ballistic weapons, when they can have a totally different feel altogether. For instance, why not remove shielding altogether from Hegemony ships and drastically increase the armor levels and armor regen rates of these ships? Then, alter Hegemony ships to emphasize the "legacy" combat style of symmetry and broadsides. In this fashion, flying a Hegemony ship will be about armor tanking on one side, while maximizing broadside damage, then doing a 180 and exposing the other "fresh" side while maintaining the broadside barrage and repairing the battered side. The Pirate faction could focus more on mobility, stealth, hit-and-run, and debilitating opponents in order to board them rather than destroying their ship.
- The Codex information on each ship should include cargo, crew and fuel capacities.
- Very little penalty for asteroid collision in combat. It's not much of an obstacle in its present form.
- Long range combat (missile ships and carriers) seem more like sitting ducks and fodder than a real strategic threat at the moment. Perhaps both missiles and fighter/bombers can benefit from the upcoming phase cloaking to help them survive their approach to a well-defended ship.
- Need more Large Missile slot weapons.
- A fleet of craft should move only as fast as its slowest ship. Conversely, there should be no penalty to travel speed if all the ships have the same travel speed.
- Different levels of orbital base/space station/planet access. Depending on your relations with the faction or the station owners or the planet, you will either have more or less menu options when accessing a location. (Perhaps even not being able to land when fully hostile).
What I would love to see added- User-defined AI behavior thresholds and target priority, e.g. retreat at 40% hull, or target missiles before fighters before ships, etc.
- Advanced Autopilot toggling - full ship control, navigation control only (user fires guns, ship drives automatically), gunnery control only (user navigates, guns fired automatically) and no ship control (off).
- Interaction with planets - it would add a lot to the immersion of the campaign if there are interaction options with certain planets and large asteroids. For example, being able to pick up special missions and recruit officers from inhabited planets, collecting Infernium and other gases from gas giant planets, or mining from asteroids and rock planets.
- More "terrain" in ship combat mode. Currently, nebulae are the only type of tactical terrain to take into account, and there's not much penalty for being inside of them. There are a lot of possible terrain options: a space debris field to jam ballistic weapons, a magnetic field to interfere with energy weapons, energy "hotzones" where missiles cannot track, among others.
- Player actions affect the overall balance of power. For example, if you have factions giving the player missions in the future, it adds to the immersion if these missions have a real impact on the "world". For example, if your mission is to hack the shield generator around an orbital station, and then the faction's fleet comes in afterwards and has an easy time capturing the planet, you have helped a faction gain more power. It's also an added bonus for the player, because he can have full access to the station's facilities.
- Orbital station combat - Player fleet vs. a full orbital station and the planetary defense fleet would be an epic fight.
- Armor customization options - directional thickening and thinning of armor, e.g. move a few plates from the back of the ship to the front.
- Own your own base (like the abandoned storage base in the campaign right now) except with some advanced perk options such as upgrading your base's facilities, officer training, weapon customization, ship tweaking/upgrades -- minor changes but at a very high cost (e.g. rotate firing arc by 30 degrees, trading less flux dissipation for more capacity, increasing ammo capacity while decreasing fuel and cargo capacity, adding 20 degrees of shield coverage, increasing travel speed by 10%, converting a weapon slot from missile to universal, etc)
- Tiers of bonuses for increasingly good faction relations, e.g. Corporation - Tier 4 Bonus: Receive 1% interest at the end of each month, Tier 3 Bonus: Access to experimental Corporation weapon designs, Tier 2 Bonus: Access to experimental Corporation ship designs, Tier 1 Bonus: Vote on Corporation business (which planet to acquire next, etc)
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From a brief glance at Starfarer's patch notes, blogs and community features, I must commend the devs for being so open about sharing their design ideas and responding to comments. Please keep this up, and keep listening to the suggestions from the community, as you are definitely doing things right!
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EDIT: "A fleet of craft should move only as fast as its fastest slowest ship."
