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[keantmp]

Hello, I've just completed a second play-though of .95 and I have some thoughts. So on to the rambling...

Skill Tree
The first and biggest one is that I really do not like the skill system. I am unable to build a character around a specific job due to the way advancement works. For instance, it is impossible to get all 4 colony skills as they are at the end of two different lines. Having to choose between navigation and sensors is also rough as the second pick here essentially requires you to give up a tier 5 skill at the max of 15 skill points. Additionally, despite respecs being available, you can lock over half your skill points in place (9/15) which IMO makes the respecs pretty useless.

However, I think the thing that most shows that the skill tree sucks is are the tier 4 industrial skills. If you wanted both of the tier 5 industrial skills you must take both tier 4, and the one the repairs d-mods effectively cancels out the other one that gives bonuses per d-mod. You are forced to pick an entirely worthless skill.

Suggestion: I would take the old skill tree back, or change it so you can pick both skills from given skill tree level once you're there instead of 'looping around', or... something. Basically anything but what we have currently.

Colony Items
I like the new colony items, however as many, many people have said, this has made finding a pristine nanoforge rather unlikely. I myself never found one despite exploring the entire sector twice. I had to resort to raiding kazeron or farming the historian. This also lead me to hoard SP for the historian and regret using them on stuff early on in my first game (like an LP hound) which kinda sucked. Similarly in one run I got several fusion lamps but no plasma dynamos which forced me to farm the historian. I'm sure people will say you're not guaranteed anything, but this effectively forced me into a loop of flying from planet to planet just to check the bar for the historian then waiting a few months doing nothing over and over. As for why I was waiting around, I had only started colonies after surveying the entire sector, so I was essentially done with that play through anyway. This will lead in to my next point.

Suggestion: Guaranteeing at least one of everything would be a bit much, but I think it would be good if the loot table took into account what you've already found and simply made rolls for rare items more likely to drop something you haven't found any of yet. Also planets seem to almost never drop rare items, where I'd expect things like the bio-embryo to be most common on planets.

Colony Locations
If you want the best colony locations, you must first survey the entire sector. I dislike this because any good planets you find aren't exciting since you're not going to colonize them any time soon and when you are ready to start making colonies, that save is basically done. What I usually end up doing is first making 'temporary' colonies that only get to size 4 so I can still abandon them. Usually this is done counter-intuitively by not upgrading space ports or putting fusion lamps on hot planets to raise their hazard rating or even dumber things like alternately selling and rebuilding the space port (and then reloading when you forget and a colony grows to size 5). Also, I'm aware you can starve out a colony but... why? Why is that the only way to do this.

Suggestion: Make colonies of any size able to be abandoned even if the cost is huge (several million) for a max size colony. It makes no sense to be able to starve out a colony with no repercussions (for free, I might add) but be unable to evacuate everyone even with several million credits. A way to release them as independent or even just a way to stop/slow a colony from growing like a 'heavy taxes' option that reduces growth rate. Something, anything.

Hypershunts and Cryo-sleepers
I really dislike the fact that you flat out cannot supply a coronal hypershunt without using AIs. I even tried putting one in a system with another planet refining transplutonics with the intent to move the extra supply to cover the one deficit over, but you can get at most a few months worth. You can cheese it by just living with the stability penalty but that sucks too. To fix this you'd need to be able to make up the difference of one transplutonic with by either reducing the requirement or increasing production of something (refining, catalytic core, or size 7 colony - hold this thought).

Cryosleeper are pretty worthless now given that that max colony size is 6 which is easily reachable without them plus their 10 organics demand. I think they need to be buffed in some way.

Suggestion: This might be a bit of serendipity. If cryo-revival facilities allowed colonies to grow larger, say.. size 7 max, you could then power a hypershunt sans AI with significant effort. You could even throw in a small penalty for having so many domain era colonists for flavor. Maybe -1 stability since they're all hopeless at the state of things compared to when they were frozen. Or reduce colony income by 10% since the sleepers had some preexisting tax agreement or something.

Amount of Colonies
I understand that having a bajillion colonies wouldn't really fit in with the setting however the current 5-7 max seems too low. Moreover, I struggle to believe that I can only "have" 3 administrators max. If their job is to run a colony so you don't have to they must be pretty bad at their job if two of them take up all your time.

Suggestion: I want to be able to control a few more colonies (maybe 10-12). I was thinking a soft cap on administrators in the shape of not receiving all the income from the colony after the first few admins due to embezzlement from not being able to provide appropriate oversight (maybe -10% for every one over the limit). So for example, if you had 4 admins, every colony under an admin would have a -20% income penalty.

Build in Safety Overrides
I dislike that you can no longer build in safety overrrides. I agree that it was OP but in universe it seems entirely arbitrary.

Suggestion: This isn't my suggestion, but I quite like the idea of building in SO also giving the ship Ill-advised modifications and wanted to mention it.

The AI
For one of my runs I was using wolf pack frigates and wanted to back them up with a couple atlas mk. II for fire support. This was patently infuriating to watch. The frigates did pretty well (I had to tell them to eliminate some isolated targets, but it is what it is), however the atlas-es were just awful. All I ever wanted was 2 large weapons to fire on the same non-fighter target and kill things. Yet, I usually got everything but. My Atlas's were fitted with 2x Hephaestus assult guns, some LRMs, and point defense. Some examples of things I saw:

• Atlas firing both large weapons at the mining pods of a venture cruiser instead of the venture itself
• Atlas switching targets away from an overloaded, nearly dead ship letting it survive for no apparent reason.
• An Atlas shooting one gun at a far away condor, one gun at a mule maybe 600 units to the left, and completely ignoring the venture it had just overloaded right in front of it, allowing the venture to survive
• Atlas several times simply sitting there not firing for fear of hitting allied frigate, going to far as to repeatedly activate ammo feeders and never shoot anything with them
• Moving into close range against a concentrated blob, ensuring death
• The list goes on and on

Suggestion: I really don't know. I wish the AI was less stupid, basically. If that's too hard then some options I could set for AI behavior would go a long way:

• Never fire large weapons at fighters.
• Never, EVER, split focus of weapon groups. (besides PD)
• Always fire on overloaded ships that are in range.
• Some setting for how much to worry about hitting friendlies. Right now it's way too high.
• Some bias setting for not changing targets. Stop wasting flux to get an enemy nearly overloaded then switching targets for no reason.

Setting these on a per-ship basis in the fitting screen would be nice.

Weapon Groups
This is kinda minor, but it did bother me. Why can't I set a weapon to be in multiple weapon groups? The AI doesn't seem to care about weapon groups and it would make piloting ships easier. To take the atlas again for an example, I cannot make a weapon group for "left broadside", "right broadside" and "forward guns" because the large guns would be in two groups.

Suggestion: Weapons can be in multiple groups. The active group takes precedence for weapon control vs. auto-firing other groups.

Extended Shields
Extended shield's bonus gets reduced by the omni-shield conversion, but not increased by the front-shield conversion.

Suggestion: This should be made consistent, one way or the other.

Shield Locking
I know this is in the frequent suggestions, but frankly I want the option even if it is "confusing" (gitgud). Alternatively...

Suggestion: Let the AI manage the (omni) shield while still letting me fly the ship otherwise, analogous to setting a weapon groups to auto-fire.

Autopilot
The changes to go to jump points instead of stars was tremendous. However, I want more.

Suggestion: It would be nice if the auto pilot avoided coronas in system and could deal with sustained burn (and not overshoot targets multiple times).

Thank you
That's everything that comes to mind right now. I hope this doesn't come off as so much complaining as anything not mentioned here I generally liked, ex. story points and of course, the actual story!

[Pratapon51]

Your other thoughts are fair, but IAM is so terrible that one may as well keep SO as non-smoddable if that were the case. 

[Phenir]

• Atlas several times simply sitting there not firing for fear of hitting allied frigate, going to far as to repeatedly activate ammo feeders and never shoot anything with them

Alex already has a solution for this that he tweeted about here. In the future, smaller ships will try to stay out of the line of fire between a larger ship and its target. Larger ships won't try to stay out of the line of fire of smaller ships but that's OK since the smaller ship is more maneuverable. From the looks of the video, the behavior of not firing when a ship could possibly enter the line of fire has also been relaxed significantly. The video was taken with a short range ship though so who knows if it is still an issue with long range weapons, especially ones with slow projectiles.

[Dexy]

Colony Locations
If you want the best colony locations, you must first survey the entire sector. I dislike this because any good planets you find aren't exciting since you're not going to colonize them any time soon and when you are ready to start making colonies, that save is basically done. What I usually end up doing is first making 'temporary' colonies that only get to size 4 so I can still abandon them. Usually this is done counter-intuitively by not upgrading space ports or putting fusion lamps on hot planets to raise their hazard rating or even dumber things like alternately selling and rebuilding the space port (and then reloading when you forget and a colony grows to size 5). Also, I'm aware you can starve out a colony but... why? Why is that the only way to do this.

Suggestion: Make colonies of any size able to be abandoned even if the cost is huge (several million) for a max size colony. It makes no sense to be able to starve out a colony with no repercussions (for free, I might add) but be unable to evacuate everyone even with several million credits. A way to release them as independent or even just a way to stop/slow a colony from growing like a 'heavy taxes' option that reduces growth rate. Something, anything.

Same feeling here. The game encourages first surveying the entire sector, when it should encourage or even require making an early colony or two (without the risk of later finding amazing planets that would have been a much better location and feeling bad about the decision).

[SafariJohn]

Colonies produce weird feelings like that because you never actually need them, so they just boil down to an optimization problem. The solution to that is for there to be reasons that you need a colony NOW, even if it is mediocre.

It would also be helpful if it were not clear cut whether a given planet is a better colony location or not. 0.95 is better about that than before, but I feel like it needs some more work. Nebula, black hole, and neutron systems always suck, for example, because they have no upsides to counter their downsides.

[Megas]

Every time I start a new game, I pick Apogee start, and (with multiple reloads) explore the entire sector for colony locations immediately.  If I do not find any that are good, I deem the seed as junk, start another game with a different seed, repeat until I find an acceptable seed.

Problem with early colonies is it ties up a lot of money that may be better spent upgrading your fleet and kill things faster.  Colonizing a crap planet early then dumping it late hurts during the time when money is still a concern.  Also, player needs to keep a constant eye on growth so that it does not grow to size 5 before player is ready to commit.  There is no warning that colonies cannot be abandoned at size 5+ until it already grows to size 5 and player finds out only after he is prevented from abandoning it.  During my last game, I kept removing spaceport from my low hazard colony to prevent it from growing to size 5.  Eventually, I decided to keep the colony (mainly due to time) and restored the spaceport.

It would be nice if there is a freeze or lockdown feature to prevent colonies from growing to the next size.  Prevent size 3 colonies from growing to preserve their immunity to expeditions and pather cells, or prevent size 4 colonies from growing so player can abandon it later.

I do not like most of the colony items because 1) Pather interest and 2) they dilute the pool and make the synchrotron and pristine nanoforges harder to find.  Synchrotron and a nanoforge are required to meet demand for military base.  They rest of the items are merely bonuses or to make an otherwise junk world viable, if not optimal due to +4 to Pather interest from the item.

Nebula, black hole, and neutron systems always suck, for example, because they have no upsides to counter their downsides.

Agreed.  In theory, stuff like fusion lamp ought to help with cold and dark worlds except the lamp adds pather interest (which means no more items if player does not want cells) and volatiles demand means player needs to min-max production (which involve size 6 and possible cores).  In other words, avoid the world like the plague if player cannot stand Pather cells.

Being (almost) impossible to meet 10 demand without AI cores hurts.  Also, hypershunt tap adding 8 interest means I never want to touch that item.  If there will be a quest where player needs to install a tap on a world to progress the story, then hopefully there will be a way to remove the cells permanently.

Amount of Colonies
I understand that having a bajillion colonies wouldn't really fit in with the setting however the current 5-7 max seems too low. Moreover, I struggle to believe that I can only "have" 3 administrators max. If their job is to run a colony so you don't have to they must be pretty bad at their job if two of them take up all your time.

Max is normally four, without skills and/or alpha cores.  That is almost the bare minimum unless player is really lucky with planet generation.  Also, meeting demand requires Industrial Planning (from you or other admin) and/or items.  Without skills, that is two worlds.

[intrinsic_parity]

Pather cells are just an occasional income reduction from disrupted industries (the disruption event is uncommon and can fail as well). That is completely irrelevant in the late game, you have more money than you know what to do with. I'm pretty sure you could completely ignore them after you get a couple colonies up to full size and be totally fine, but I usually clear the bases when it's convenient. There's no reason to make major decisions based on pather cells IMO.

[SafariJohn]

Nebula, black hole, and neutron systems always suck, for example, because they have no upsides to counter their downsides.

In theory, stuff like fusion lamp ought to help with cold and dark worlds

Yeah, fusion lamp sounds like it would be useful for them, but it's way better used turning a hot planet to very hot for super-charging the cryo-computer item or removing the cold condition from an otherwise great habitable world.

[Yunru]

Nebula, black hole, and neutron systems always suck, for example, because they have no upsides to counter their downsides.

In theory, stuff like fusion lamp ought to help with cold and dark worlds

Yeah, fusion lamp sounds like it would be useful for them, but it's way better used turning a hot planet to very hot for super-charging the cryo-computer item or removing the cold condition from an otherwise great habitable world.

Cryo-Computer item?

[AcaMetis]

Cryo-Computer item?

The Cryoarithmetic Engine. It's a colony item that increases patrol fleet size on hot or very hot worlds (the latter moreso than the former, hence heating up already hot worlds for the bonus).

[Yunru]

Oh nice, hadn't run into that one!

[keantmp]

Colonies produce weird feelings like that because you never actually need them, [...]

As someone who was 25m+ in debt in my last run, I beg to differ.

Your other thoughts are fair, but IAM is so terrible that one may as well keep SO as non-smoddable if that were the case. 

I'd still like the option, even if only because I think it works well thematically.

Amount of Colonies
I understand that having a bajillion colonies wouldn't really fit in with the setting however the current 5-7 max seems too low. Moreover, I struggle to believe that I can only "have" 3 administrators max. If their job is to run a colony so you don't have to they must be pretty bad at their job if two of them take up all your time.

Max is normally four, without skills and/or alpha cores.  That is almost the bare minimum unless player is really lucky with planet generation.  Also, meeting demand requires Industrial Planning (from you or other admin) and/or items.  Without skills, that is two worlds.

Yeah, I was talking about skills max and that you can usually go one extra and just take the -2 stability. That's another thing all together, you can have +4 stability if you're only managing one colony. It's weird that the 'amount of colonies you can manage' is just a sliding scale for another attribute. Getting the +2 stability ground operations skill is literally exactly the same net effect as +1 colony you can manage, so you can "manage" 4 colonies directly + have 3 admins if you get both skills.

• Atlas several times simply sitting there not firing for fear of hitting allied frigate, going to far as to repeatedly activate ammo feeders and never shoot anything with them

Alex already has a solution for this that he tweeted about here. In the future, smaller ships will try to stay out of the line of fire between a larger ship and its target. Larger ships won't try to stay out of the line of fire of smaller ships but that's OK since the smaller ship is more maneuverable. From the looks of the video, the behavior of not firing when a ship could possibly enter the line of fire has also been relaxed significantly. The video was taken with a short range ship though so who knows if it is still an issue with long range weapons, especially ones with slow projectiles.

A step forward to be sure, but it's just one item on a laundry list of things. Particularly not focusing fire even in the same weapon group on one ship.


Edit: For *** I plotted the line for abandoning colony prices (going through 1k,50k and 10k,100k). Based on that abandoning a size 5 colony would be 600k and a size 6 would be 5.6m.