Beel

I too only play single player. So I don't have a problem with large bully players killing my ships. However that is a valid concern in the multiplayer world. I have seen reports of some players refusing to play because of the bullying. I also see the update that limited the turrets based on slots to limit the amount of power that a ship can have, and I assume that this is to avoid the problem of bullying, since it makes no sense in any other context. Therefore although I don't play multiplayer, it would be wrong for me to not think about how changes would work in a multiplayer environment, and to suggest changes that would work well for both environments, instead of only the one that I play in. As for "spend a lot of time building ... stations and establishing trade and control in a region", I personally would love the game to expand in this area, and for it to actually be a focus of the game. For instance I would love for it to be about building a "base" in some sector(s), and protecting the base from pirates. I have tried that aspect in the game as it is currently, and it didn't work out for me at all. The trade stations cost an enormous amount to get started, the goods were never bought unless I did it myself, and the pirates were powerless foes so protection was almost not needed. So I have abandoned the trade aspect of this game, except where it is forced upon me, and find it a bit of a drudgery as it is currently. Hopefully some day that is developed. Perhaps you could make some suggestions on how this could be developed to be better.

Where the game is already procedurally generated, it could have a single universe have galaxies that are much smaller (say 200 x 200, or even 100 x 100). Each galaxy would effectively be equal to a universe as it is currently defined. There would be a single, one way, gate in the center of each galaxy, that is protected by an appropriately strong NPC Boss, and allows movement in one direction only, allowing a player to go to the next stronger galaxy. Once you move a single ship from galaxy 1 to Galaxy 2, since you are only allowed to be in a single galaxy at a time, all other ships of yours that were left behind in galaxy 1 would immediately disappear. Galaxy 1 could be iron/Titanium (or just iron if iron generators would be allowed), the next one would introduce the next element, etc. Once all elements are introduced, then the NPC would simply get 1.5 times as strong. The only way of "opening" a galaxy level is to travel to it, after you kill the boss that is protecting the gate, of course. I can easily see this scenario producing bragging rights of "I am in galaxy #XX". It would also allow people to play this game indefinitely if they wanted to, without coming to an "end" after which there is no point in playing it any more. And it would greatly reduce the size of the galaxy that the game had to deal with at any single time, especially for single player servers. And this will also most likely solve the problem of players with really large ships destroying players that have really small ships. Or atleast would go a long way in that regard. Since for example, a player with access to trinium, could not attack a player that only had access to iron. Thus the game would most likely no longer need to limit turrets via ship upgrades in a way that basically sets the maximum number of turrets that a ship could ever have, but instead could allow the ship volume to control the number of turrets (or turret slots) in a linear manor.

Oddly enough, it was the comment that I saw that said that the makers of this game tried for as much realism as possible, that was one of the major reasons I tried it to begin with. So I hope that your statement isn't the way that developers feel.

Kamo, I have a captain in every ship at all times. But being that the game is still in development, I find that about a quarter of the time the ship won't move even though it has a captain. Once I reboot the server again, often times it will start moving again. Kampfkrapfn, Although that process works, it is not something that the game should ask a player to know or to do. In fact, I consider that process a bug as opposed to a feature. What should happen in that scenario is that you should be put into your drone at that location. riess, That is music to my ears. Maybe I should switch to the Beta branch. I have been avoiding it in favor of more stability, but this change alone is enough to warrant putting up with less stability. I will consider that.

The problem is that as it stands right now, players are constantly changing their ship as needed at that second. Pirates show up and you change the upgrades to shield boosters. Pirates You want to move, change the upgrades to hyper space boosts. Etc. You shouldn't be able to change your ship makeup in the middle of nowhere, at a second's notice. The game already allows a player to have multiple ships. They could easily fly one ship while the other is being worked on. So the player wouldn't be idle. They would just have to think and plan what upgrades they wanted installed BEFORE they needed them, and wouldn't be able to time share their upgrades mid-flight.

Separate ship design from ship building, and make it take time to happen. - Ship design is basically what you have now, and the person saves the ship design. - Require all ship building to be done at ship making buildings. Nothing can be made without the ship making building. - Make the building of ships, and modifications of ships take time. The time should be proportional to the size of the change. Small ships and small ship changes build very quickly. Large ships build very slowly. The amount of tons of metal can be used as the speed factor. As in, the building builds X tons of ship per minute. Minimum build time is 1 minute. - The same for repairs. Repairs only happen at repair depots, and 1 minute per x tons of time to happen. - The ship making buildings in the iron/titanium area doesn't have the ability to build with higher level metals. So to build a ship with certain metals, the player needs to have it built in an area capable of building with those metals.

You allow switching the player to a different sector, but only if the player already has a ship in that sector. Therefore when you do that, you shouldn't start the player in a drone 60 km away from their ship. You should instead start them in that ship. Reasons why: - Once your drone arrives, NPC start arriving and attacking your craft ship. But your craft ship is unable to defend itself, and it takes you 3 minutes to connect with it, so all you can do is watch it be destroyed while you try to get to it. - I have lost my main ship before because the server crashed while I was in a firefight, and when I was able to restart it and reconnect to it, it started me in a drone so far away from that the ship, that all I could do was watch it be destroyed, and a server crash should NEVER destroy your ship. - The whole purpose of switching to a sector that you have a ship in is to tend your ship. So let us tend our ship. Don't make us waste minutes getting to the ship before we can tend it. Even when you have only 40 craft ships, making us waste just 45 seconds for the switch to happen, and then 1 minute to get to the ship, and then another 15 seconds getting the ship mining again makes it take over an hour and a half just to get the craft ships mining again before you can get back to actually playing the game. And it isn't too much longer than that, and the craft ships are running out of stuff to do, so you have to start the process all over again.

Fighters currently need to be micro-managed. You send your salvaging fighters to wreckage to salvage it, and they attack the center, breaking it into a pile of individual pieces. Then when they are done the main wreck, and have only the huge pile of pieces left, then you need to select each piece and tell them that you want them to salvage it, waiting each time for them to do the individual piece. This makes them virtually useless. What I suggest is that if they are told to salvage a wreck, then when they are done what they think is that piece of wreckage, they will look for the next nearest piece of wreckage, and salvage it. They will keep doing this until the user gives them a new command, like Return. The same for all fighter types. For instance, if you send out mining fighters to mine Xanion, then when they are done mining that asteroid, they will fly to the nearest Xanion asteroid and mine it. But if you tell them to mine an Xanion asteroid, then they will not mine anything except Xanion. I.e. they will continue to do exactly what you told them to do, but will not do something that you didn't tell them to do. This single change would make them TONS more useful.