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1. Not being able to run away without a story point. Stop that stupid crap. Also stop it with getting a bit of extra money on deals while we are on the topic of stupid game mechanics. Seriously story points are the hardest to come by and so rare why would a player even spend them on your stupid crap? If I get into a fight I know I will die I just altf4. Problem solved. Weee save scumming my favourite game feature! And for an extra 10,000 money for a shipping deal what an insult. If it is 1 billion I would still say no unless I can start to buy story points with money. Eliminate this crap immediately. Replace it will losing CR if you run but if you are smart enough to know you can't win you shouldn't be punished so hard for not being an idiot.
Always being able to run away would be a good idea for easy mode, but for normal I prefer the current system. It makes it a requirement that you have a good enough fleet to protect a large cargo fleet.
Also, you can run away once you've beaten a certain percentage of the enemy fleet, or 100DP, whichever is less. Which opens up a lot of options for partially defeating superior forces. With a few exceptions, the enemy will only deploy enough ships to defeat your deployed ships. So, deploying a small portion of your fleet, baiting the enemies to your spawn point, and then deploying the entirety of your combat fleet on that portion of the enemies fleet is a good way to kill enough of the enemies fleet to safely reach the retreat DP.
Once you've beaten this percent, you can always safely retreat without being pursued.
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2. Suicidal ships. When you pick run they all die. Weeee what a great game feature!! If you know you are going to lose or want to engage in hit and run tactics what can you do in this game? That's right nothing!! Weeee what fun when to take away all player agency! and might even kill enough to allow disengage and then as soon as you pick it all your ships decide to kill themselves. To fix this getting to the disengage state should happen 5x fasted. For both you and the AI if you run weapons should be disabled. All power should go into the speed of escape and it should be x3. Shields should still work. This also has the added perk of resolving conflicts for both sides faster.
Same as the player, the enemy can deploy frigates along the side of the battle during a disengage attempt. In order to get through it without dying, you need ships that are at least as fast as the pursuers, or ships that defend slower cargo ships until they can retreat.
Given if you have the later you can typically handle normal battles, I recommend putting Safety Overrides and Unstable Injector on Hounds and Drams. Very little in the game will be fast enough to catch them.
Do not buy cruiser+ sized cargo and fuel haulers until you are certain you can defend them.
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3. Ships refusing to listen to commands. Its so frustrating when you issue a command and the ship totally ignores if for 5 minutes strait until the command no longer matters then it goes to follow it and kills itself after everything else is also dead. Go job. When I issue a command FOLLOW IT 10000% of the time. Do not screw around. If the ship dies follow MY command then it is MY fault. When it doesn't DO ANYTHING after a command whose fault is that? Hint the developer for taking away player agency.
While there are a couple tweaks needed (eliminate will point at nearby enemy ships on its way to kill its target which slows it down), most of the commands are fine but don't explain what they do. So, I'll give you a brief explanation.
Defend = Go here at some point please. It has no leash, very little priority, and will mostly be ignored. Seems worthless, but it is useful for drawing battle lines for large fleets.
Eliminate = Move here immediately and kill this no matter what. Ships given this command will move in the direction of their target, but as mentioned will point at nearby enemy ships on their
way to the target. Likewise, it makes ships very aggressive, so use it cautiously.
Waypoint = Be in the general area. It works like a leash, and will keep ships from pursuing enemies past a certain point. Large groups of enemies can scare ships past their leash range.
Civilian Waypoint = Sit here and do not move, EVER.
Escort = Sit next to this ship, and never leave it. Incredibly short leash range, and can very easily get ships killed as they won't leave the ship they are escorting.
Retreat = Retreat while avoiding enemies, but point at and shoot any that approach. It had a bug that causes it to not retreat the moment the order is given, which has a couple other bugs. To
get around this bug, issue a waypoint order to the bottom of the map, wait a couple seconds, then issue a retreat order.
Direct Retreat = Same as retreat, but ships will face towards the bottom of the map, thereby allowing forward movement systems to aid in their retreat. This has the same bug and solution as
normal retreat, and should only be given to ships with forwards movement systems, and given cautiously to ships with engines that do not have shield coverage.
There are some other orders, but they mostly do what you would expect them to do. If you don't want a ship following defend orders, set it to search and destroy, this is exactly the same as giving it no orders but it won't follow defend orders.
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4. Not enough command points to do anything useful. Lets assume that actually issuing commands helped... then you should want to issue lots of commands and increase player agency right? You have a whole UI interface for commands I never use as they are both useless and I have to little to bother learning them. Give me 50 command points and allow better setting up of fleets and taking command points ahead of time so I don't have to repeat myself every battle then we are getting somewhere.
Skills and the Operations Center hullmod greatly increase point regeneration. Every time you leave the command screen and begin piloting your ship again, you lose the remaining command time for that command point. If you need to issue commands and then see how things play out as you may need to issue more, turn on AI piloting, and un-pause time without leaving the command screen or by viewing any ship.
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5. Slow game, slow ships, slow getting into combat, slow travel. Slow slow slow slow slow. Respect my time. Quit screwing around. I have a x4 mod for travel and x2 mod for battle. Finally makes the game bearable.
Play with high-tech and avoid the Paragon and Astral. You're welcome.
