Just started playing again and I'd like to mention something that Alex probably forgot:
After all the recent changes, a lot of the "Missions" (IE: Standalone battle scenarios) probably need to be re-examined and re-tuned. With the new ship abilities, improved enemy AI, and balance changes to some weapons, some of the battles that were balanced before are now incredibly lopsided.
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Hi, welcome back - long time!
Right. Tuning up (redoing, really) the missions is actually on my list It's not something I like to do often because it's a moving target; fine-tuning can be a waste when more things are going to change later anyway. But at this point - with the new deployment mechanics - it's just necessary. I might end up paring down the mission list a bit just to make the process more manageable.
Thanks for all the other feedback, too - it's good to see a "first impressions" style thing from someone that's been away for a while.
Since I dug into the campaign, I have a few more insights:
-Accidents are a royal pain early in the game when you only have one ship. It makes the one-ship grind a pain. However once you get a fleet, it's largely trivial because you'll have more than enough cargo space. Might need some slight adjusting or something just to make it less frustrating and grindy.
-The Hegemony Station's default equipment available is mostly junk, while both the Pirate and Tri-Tachyon bases have excellent gear. After a few convoys, it gets some better stuff, but it's default stuff could use a boost.
-The AI for ships almost seems too good for them having only Green or Regular crews. They seldom make mistakes, can perfectly time shielding, and are very accurate against moving targets. I could see this for Veteran or Elite crews, but with less experienced crews, it just feels kinda off.
-The "Panic and fire all of your missiles a split second before you die" thing that a lot of the larger ships seem to have now is pretty annoying. Just sayin'.
-Did I mention that I hate Tempests with a passion? If you haven't invested in Speed upgrades, you'll probably never catch them and they'll kite you while spamming Terminator Drones constantly. They're the most frustrating ship to fight, hands-down. Good god, I hate these things.
-The tech trees are great. Technology let me tweak out my ships on one character, while Combat let me have super-fast guns-blazing ships on another. Makes each character feel unique. However....
-The Leadership tree is fairly underwhelming. There wasn't much in it that made me feel "Wow, this character is a super-good commander!". I had some ideas for things you could put in it. IMO, it's a perfect tree to put boosts for:
*Fighters (Since you never directly control them, but commanding them well is vital)
*Increasing Cargo, Personnel, and Fuel capacity
*Increasing boosts from controlling Nav Buoys, Sensor Arrays, ect
*Increasing line of sight/sensor range for your fleet in battle
*Allowing you to give a number of pre-battle orders to your fleet (The number of these bonus orders would increase with rank)