Alex - I sent you a note with this info in it already, but I wanted to make sure I posted it in the Suggestions thread in order to invite additional feedback and comments from the community.
After playing the game (and loving it) for many, many hours, here is a list of some initial suggestions organized by short, medium and long term priorities:
Short Term:
1. Ability to Assign ships "stop and hold position" orders - i've noticed that quite often ships will engage the enemy and over-pursue during a fight, even when they are outnumbered and outclassed. This often results in ships being destroyed due to their lack of caution. Even telling a ship to "Defend" or "Patrol" an area can still mean that it will go far outside of its assigned zone and quickly run into enemy opposition. Telling a ship to hold ground would be very useful. This is similar to the option in many RTS games where units can be set to "attack stance" or "hold ground" stance.
1b. On a related point, the current "Defend" and "Patrol" actions are difficult to distinguish in functionality. Although i don't know the code behind the game, from the many hours that I played, I could not readily distinguish one action from the other. In both cases, ships seemed to initially go to the location marked as defend or patrol, and then over-pursue enemies and go far beyond that location into distant areas on the map. I suggest replacing these 2 orders with a single "Rally Point" order and then each ship would have the option to "Go to Rally Point and hold position" or "Go to Rally point and aggressively defend the position by pursuing enemy ships that venture close to the Rally point." There may be other, more elegant solutions, that I am not thinking of right now, but overall I would suggest that the functionality of the "defend" and "patrol" orders be revisited.
2. Ability to Assign multiple consecutive actions by "shift-clicking" on multiple places in a map and spending 1 command point per action. Sometimes it is very helpful to "queue" up commands, such as telling a group of small, agile fighters to capture several strategic points in a row. Currently, after completing their assigned action, it is difficult to tell what a ship will do and it makes it harder to strategically control the battlefield or plan ahead.
3. UI Enhancements to the deployment screen that can be accessed by pressing the "G" button. Currently the screen only shows if a ship has been deployed or not. You can also see the flux and hull status of a ship, but only by clicking on each ship individually. I suggest that the status screen be significantly expanded and that the following information be added:
Ship flux/health status for friendly ships - clearly displayed as two bars above the picture of each ship
Friendly ships: Active ships colored green (as they are now), with the status "Deployed" clearly displayed below the picture of the ship
Friendly ships: Destroyed/Incapacitated/Fled ships colored red or dark grey, with their status displayed below the picture of the ship and the point value lost displayed on top of the picture of the ship
Enemy ships: Active ships that are visible on your radar colored green, with the status "Deployed" clearly displayed below the picture of the ship and with health/flux bars above the ship picture
Enemy ships: Destroyed/Incapacitated/Fled ships colored red or dark grey, with the status clearly displayed below the picture of the ship and the point value you won for destroying/incapacitating that ship displayed on top of the picture of the ship
Enemy ships: Active ships that are not visible on your radar colored dark grey, with the status labeled as "unknown location" and a question mark symbol displayed on top of the picture of the ship
The goal is to provide a quick, "at a glance" view of the entire battle from a single screen. It's very helpful to know which of your ships are close to full health and which ones are about to be destroyed. It's also very helpful to know if any enemy ships are about to be eliminated due to low health and also how many ships the opponent has remaining (even if you don't know their exact location due to "fog of war"). This type of general status screen would make it much easier to plan out high level strategy for the entire battle.
4. On the current map, whenever a ship is assigned an action, there is an orange or green arrow that extends away from the ship and points towards the objective it is currently assigned to. These arrows work great for visibly showing where each ship is going, but when there are too many ships on the screen, it is often difficult to trace the tip of the arrow all the way back to the ship. This is because the arrows have some shading on them. At the tip of the arrow, they are a darker, more fuller green but near the ship they are a very light, barely visible green. If two or three ships are right on top of each other, you can't tell which arrow belongs to which ship. I suggest a simple fix - clicking on the arrow should highlight the ship it belongs to. This will also help in selecting ships, since when they are on top of each other, it's sometimes difficult to click on the one you want to select.
Medium Term:
1. Creation of more unique, click-to-activate, ship abilities. Currently, each ship has a selection of weapons to choose from. It can be argued that most of the weapons should be set to auto-fire, while missiles should be manually fired by the player. In a way, missiles represent a "ship ability" , while the other weapons represent the "generic attack" of a unit. When I say "ship ability" I am referring to the set of actions that meet the following criteria:
a. They need to be manually activated
b. Manually activating them adds an element of skill or strategy to the game. For example, choosing exactly when to fire a missile is a strategic decision best left to the player. Similarly, choosing when to vent your flux is another strategic (and very skillful) action that is best left to the player.
c. They have limited use or have a long cooldown effect. For example, since there are only a few missiles on each ship, the decision about when to use each one becomes very interesting and important and should therefore be left to the player.
d. They can have dramatic, game changing impact on the game - but can also be completely wasted if used without caution or forethought. Using a missile at just the right time can cripple an enemy ship and venting flux at the last possible moment can turn the tide of battle. Alternatively, missiles can be wasted or even used to harm the player's ship if fired too close and venting flux at the wrong moment can leave a ship stranded and waiting for death.
Missiles and flux (and shields for that matte) represent "ship abilities" that are already in the game. I suggest that others be created that follow the same guidelines as illustrated above (points a thru d). Here are just a few thoughts:
a. Ability to deploy mines
b. Ability to create a "gravity field" on the map where ships that pass through it have their movement decreased or altered in some way
c. Ability to engage thrusters and get a temporary, very high speed boost
d. Ability to cloak
e. Ability to self destruct
g. Ability to set warp points and warp between them
I don't want to get carried away, although it is easy to brainstorm a million other cool abilities. Of course, keeping things simple is key, so perhaps limiting things to only one ability per ship and assigning it to a hot-key like Q would keep things manageable while adding a good deal of tactics and strategy.
Long Term:
There are many elements that can be suggested for long term implementation, and I will quickly acknowledge that you know and understand the long term plan for Starfarer way better than I do. I don't want to throw you of course or distract you from your current long term plans, so I will just throw out just two suggestion to keep "in the back of your head."
1. Somehow involve planets in the game using some (or all) of the above factors.
a. Let planets each have their own gravitational field that impacts the movement of ships that venture too close to them
b. Allow planets to have defensive installations such as planetary defense lasers or short range fighters or minefields that make it difficult to get close to them and that can be the cornerstone of certain missions focused on taking over key planets
2. Create additional "space obstacles" or objectives beyond the current floating asteroids and stationary objectives. Just a few random suggestions:
b. create moving objectives in addition to stationary ones
c. create warp gates or zones
d. create "gravity fields" where ships move slower, are harder to target, have malfunctioning weapons or which have other effects on ships that move into them
