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As always, you're entitled to your opinion and you make valid points. That said, I'm of the opposite persuasion. The core gameplay has not suffered, IMO, and being god-like gets boring. In previous patches, once you get your fleet and/or flagship to a certain level, the game has no challenge anymore unless you handicap yourself. Moreover, the campaign additions give the player reason to fight, which is sometimes just as important as the fighting itself. Traveling to a bounty or other target builds the suspense: if I could just instant travel there the only thing it does is make my time from Level 0 - 40 that much quicker. Not to mention that there are now fleets, derelicts, and other systems that beg for me to check them out along the way. The campaign additions since .8 have added a sense of surprise/discovery to the game that SS has been teasing through lore since the beginning. I'll agree these additions have made constant fighting less achievable but just like in music, you need lows to bring out the highs. If you find campaign travel tedious, I get it (I do too at times), but in light of what it has the potential to do, i.e. gives us exploration, surveying, salvage, etc., I'm more than happy to travel around considering the payoffs in doing the other activities.
I've found combat to be as satisfying as ever because I know I can lose. In the large fleet actions of high-end bounties or faction fleets, even if I'm in a battleship with max skills, there's a difference between knowing you're the strongest guy on the block and knowing you're invincible. By virtue of skills and human intelligence, I know I'm going to have an advantage in the vast majority of encounters but in previous patches, player skill was buried under overpowered skill perks that homogenized every battle. It didn't matter if I was good or terrible, when my flagship has 50+% more OP, Vents, Damage, Armor, Speed and everything else relative to what's against me, I can mash my face into the keyboard and win. I don't find that fun, or at least, not fun for very long. In the current meta game, many of my flagships are pound-for-pound better than what I'm up against (I like SO Hammerhead right now), but without really good positioning or help from my fleet, there's no way I can take on capitals or large carriers. It is
because of that limitation I'm finding more enjoyment in having to be very particular with the battles I pick and knowing I can lose if I get in over my head is where the thrill is. As you say, there is no actual parity in the game: the campaign factions will always just spawn another fleet, but I want the illusion of parity. It's far more meaningful to me to win a fight where I thought it was fair or I was the underdog than to go in as the favorite. After all, why are bosses in other games always so much bigger than the player?