After a few hundred hours played I figured I'd suggest some things that I think should be added to game as well as a few minor bugs due to recent updates.
This will be very economy oriented as that's where my interest in the game comes from. Building one big ship is cool and all but after you kill the guardian that's about it. Without an economy element to it the game more or less stops there so I believe adding different layers to gameplay is essential.
Economy:
-Credit graph: most games that have a supply chain or economy will allow you to see how much specific buildings are spending and how much they are making. This would allow for a more detailed understanding of where money is going and coming from, in other words if specific stations are profitable.
-Cargo filter (whitelist/blacklist): I often times set up trade routes with my ships that is specific to their cargo space, at time those ships accidentally pick up debris or cargo from nearby wrecks throwing off their command loops given that they can't pick the specific amount I wanted them to do. An ability to whitelist/blacklist specific things would prevent this from happening this could also carry over with salvagers and miners allowing them to only pick up a specific ore/material if you wish to maximize the ships jumps.
-Stations buy/sell filter: As of right now you can't tell stations to only sell off one good or only buy 1 of their necessary inputs so if you are producing all but 1 input you need to allow the station to buy from others this means that sometimes you will end up buying a good you actually produce elsewhere because your trade ship is busy/too slow.
Command Loops:
-Stop/Resume: setting up command loops is currently infuriating if you take slightly too long to issue the second command because the ship immediately does the first command. This also carries over if you for some reason need to take command of the ship, it clears the commands and if you set up more than a few commands it is very tiresome to have to set them up again.
-Routes: When setting defensive patrol routes or trade routes sometimes you need a few ships doing the same thing just not at the same time. This means you need to set them up individually limiting your interest in having them do any lengthy series of commands. Setting up series of commands and then the ability to assign ships to them would resolve the stop/resume problem and this one. This is also very prominent in any trade game.
-Modifying existing command: if you make a mistake when setting up a route you need to clear the whole thing to start over. As you have the queued orders even numbered it would stand to reason that there should be a way to change that order by clicking on it to change % price or amount wanted. At the very least allowing players to see what that order's specifics are would be helpful as "buy copper until x quantity" doesn't help you for how much he is meant to be buying it at.
-Commands position in map mode: The commands position under the ship currently is an annoyance when telling a ship to go a few sectors from its current location always kind of feels in the way even with the ctrl option. An alternative would be to disregard the ctrl option and where it says in the map "ctrl: move icons" just have the potential commands as they seem to be of equal size.
-Ships using gates/wormholes: Currently to my knowledge the only way to have a ship that you are not in use a gate/wormhole is to be in rts mode (f9) this somewhat limits the ability to manage your empire as well as limits the incentive to want to operate within a faction given that any stray shot can have them turn on you. The ability to tell ships via commands to use gates/wormhole would push for a more symbiotic relation with players and factions as well as just making moving your fleet easier if you don't all simply have them following you.
-Ambiguous buy command: This might simply be poor wording or perhaps this doesn't work the way it should but as it reads when you buy a good with commands it reads "buy for at least X's of average price" inferring that would be buying a good for anything above that %, whereas you would want it to instead be "buy for anything below" or "buy for at most".
-Supplying sectors/Selling in quantity: when setting up trade ships it takes an eternity to set commands to sell every item you may have bought elsewhere in the route. The ability to "sell anything for above X's of average price" would make this incredibly easier and allow you to sell in mass if you have a hauler that you use to sell off stuff you pirate from other factions instead of having to set the command to sell for every single item you may have gotten.
-Slider for buy/sell: Instead of making it a set % in increments of 5 for buying and selling it should simply be a slider like when hiring crew or setting prices for stations as stations can be anything between 50-150% which would allow for more precision.
-Time constraints or quantity depth: Currently if you would like to sell a good at more than 1 sector you need to figure out how much they will consume compared to the other sectors on your route as you can only sell until a specific quantity. This can led to a ship getting bogged down waiting on a station that won't buy because its missing something else to consume its goods. The ability to tell ships to sell if stations will buy x or above would prevent this.
example
Ship goes to sector buys 500 copper
Goes to sector A and sell until no stations wants to buy more than 100 at current % price
Jump to sector B and sell until no station wants to buy more than 200 at current % price
Loop
An alternative would be to put it as a time constraint such as "goes to sector A and sell until 100 left or 5 minutes have passed"
-Double commands: When setting miners if they get attacked they just stand there and get damaged until they die. So you need to setup a defending warship. Allowing players to be able to tell ships to still defend themselves during mine asteroid or salvage order would allow those ships to last a little longer maybe a priority for orders (ex. attack if it can otherwise mine) In this example the ship would have to be able to toggle to attack if enemies warp in and it is mining. This could carry over to trade. (ex. Buy 500 copper at 90% otherwise buy 1000 platinum at 95%)
Factions:
-Factions growth: Factions seem very static at their current state. You either kill their stations and leave a sector void of life or try and protect their stuff for your own purposes. This carries over with factions wars. Helping either side serve little purpose if you have a good relations with both as helping them destroy the stations means they are gone forever. Giving the ability for factions to make more stations or upgrade their existing ones if inputs are always full and outputs are always empty would encourage more or a flexible synergy with factions and players. With the new boarding features this could also allow factions to take over other factions sectors. This could led to a faction getting very big giving it negative relations with nearby factions which could lead to war causing them to fracture into multiple smaller factions starting the process all over.
This would lead to some obvious issues about how a factions gets the upper hand which would probably lead to a need for a mechanic to prevent factions from being able to just spawn in ships whenever they want and instead having to have enough money to support more warship/civilian ships.
This would make the galaxy alive as in the recent patch notes it has been make apparent that the devs want it to feel more so.
-Traits/diplomacy: Faction traits could play into growth as well passive factions not wanting to go to war with bigger factions or aggressive being trigger happy. I know its been said that it is an upcoming feature and I think it could play into the negotiation in diplomacy. Perhaps you can get better standing with a faction provided you can fulfill their request. Maybe destroy rival factions headquarters or bring X amount of good Y to headquarters with no payment in return and instead simply reputation points.
-Faction borders: the only way to see which factions owns which sector currently is by either typing their name in the search or hovering over every sector which isn't as user friendly. A simple outline/border of surrounding all the sectors owned by a faction or their name bannered over their occupied space like EU4/stellaris would make this more visually appealing as if you have admired standing with 2 factions it is just be a blob of green.
-Pirate/player hyperspace blockers: I often see players complain about none stop pirates currently as the game stands their is no way to prevent xsotan and pirates to span other than modifying the files or perhaps mods. A station that prevents pirates and xsotan to span and perhaps even act a rift for players limiting their jump capabilities without good relations with the owner of the stations would be a neat way to prevent that from happening. This could be reliant on goods to keep working encouraging players to set up economies/trade routes to feed the blocker station instead of having more and more warships the debuff would go away if you can't keep it supplied.
-Headquarters: Headquarters don't do much as of right now other than for the guardian, going off the previous point of stations that consume goods to give players extra advantages perhaps one way to deal with accidental stray shots angering your home factions resulting in the entire region getting destroyed you could have the ability to have friendly fire off with that faction if you feed specific goods continuously. If you stop supplying it the debuff is lost and you can harm their ships/stations. The concept of the headquarters always kind of underwhelmed me. I think perhaps as a way to preventing a factions from spawning more ships could be if their headquarters is destroyed they can't warp in a fleet anymore or produce more ships if the mechanic to make ships is implemented.
Miscellaneous:
-Health in Fleet Tab: Sometimes things go wrong with your fleet and without warping to the sector they are in or getting a notification there is no way to know if they are ok. A health/shield bar for ships in the fleet tab would allow for more of an overview of your empire
-Save password for server: It is very tedious to have to enter the password for favorited servers everytime you join. A save password option should be implemented.
TL:dr
Factions should be able to colonize other sectors, and upgrade their stations.
Suggestion
Coyote
After a few hundred hours played I figured I'd suggest some things that I think should be added to game as well as a few minor bugs due to recent updates.
This will be very economy oriented as that's where my interest in the game comes from. Building one big ship is cool and all but after you kill the guardian that's about it. Without an economy element to it the game more or less stops there so I believe adding different layers to gameplay is essential.
Economy:
-Credit graph: most games that have a supply chain or economy will allow you to see how much specific buildings are spending and how much they are making. This would allow for a more detailed understanding of where money is going and coming from, in other words if specific stations are profitable.
-Cargo filter (whitelist/blacklist): I often times set up trade routes with my ships that is specific to their cargo space, at time those ships accidentally pick up debris or cargo from nearby wrecks throwing off their command loops given that they can't pick the specific amount I wanted them to do. An ability to whitelist/blacklist specific things would prevent this from happening this could also carry over with salvagers and miners allowing them to only pick up a specific ore/material if you wish to maximize the ships jumps.
-Stations buy/sell filter: As of right now you can't tell stations to only sell off one good or only buy 1 of their necessary inputs so if you are producing all but 1 input you need to allow the station to buy from others this means that sometimes you will end up buying a good you actually produce elsewhere because your trade ship is busy/too slow.
Command Loops:
-Stop/Resume: setting up command loops is currently infuriating if you take slightly too long to issue the second command because the ship immediately does the first command. This also carries over if you for some reason need to take command of the ship, it clears the commands and if you set up more than a few commands it is very tiresome to have to set them up again.
-Routes: When setting defensive patrol routes or trade routes sometimes you need a few ships doing the same thing just not at the same time. This means you need to set them up individually limiting your interest in having them do any lengthy series of commands. Setting up series of commands and then the ability to assign ships to them would resolve the stop/resume problem and this one. This is also very prominent in any trade game.
-Modifying existing command: if you make a mistake when setting up a route you need to clear the whole thing to start over. As you have the queued orders even numbered it would stand to reason that there should be a way to change that order by clicking on it to change % price or amount wanted. At the very least allowing players to see what that order's specifics are would be helpful as "buy copper until x quantity" doesn't help you for how much he is meant to be buying it at.
-Commands position in map mode: The commands position under the ship currently is an annoyance when telling a ship to go a few sectors from its current location always kind of feels in the way even with the ctrl option. An alternative would be to disregard the ctrl option and where it says in the map "ctrl: move icons" just have the potential commands as they seem to be of equal size.
-Ships using gates/wormholes: Currently to my knowledge the only way to have a ship that you are not in use a gate/wormhole is to be in rts mode (f9) this somewhat limits the ability to manage your empire as well as limits the incentive to want to operate within a faction given that any stray shot can have them turn on you. The ability to tell ships via commands to use gates/wormhole would push for a more symbiotic relation with players and factions as well as just making moving your fleet easier if you don't all simply have them following you.
-Ambiguous buy command: This might simply be poor wording or perhaps this doesn't work the way it should but as it reads when you buy a good with commands it reads "buy for at least X's of average price" inferring that would be buying a good for anything above that %, whereas you would want it to instead be "buy for anything below" or "buy for at most".
-Supplying sectors/Selling in quantity: when setting up trade ships it takes an eternity to set commands to sell every item you may have bought elsewhere in the route. The ability to "sell anything for above X's of average price" would make this incredibly easier and allow you to sell in mass if you have a hauler that you use to sell off stuff you pirate from other factions instead of having to set the command to sell for every single item you may have gotten.
-Slider for buy/sell: Instead of making it a set % in increments of 5 for buying and selling it should simply be a slider like when hiring crew or setting prices for stations as stations can be anything between 50-150% which would allow for more precision.
-Time constraints or quantity depth: Currently if you would like to sell a good at more than 1 sector you need to figure out how much they will consume compared to the other sectors on your route as you can only sell until a specific quantity. This can led to a ship getting bogged down waiting on a station that won't buy because its missing something else to consume its goods. The ability to tell ships to sell if stations will buy x or above would prevent this.
example
Ship goes to sector buys 500 copper
Goes to sector A and sell until no stations wants to buy more than 100 at current % price
Jump to sector B and sell until no station wants to buy more than 200 at current % price
Loop
An alternative would be to put it as a time constraint such as "goes to sector A and sell until 100 left or 5 minutes have passed"
-Double commands: When setting miners if they get attacked they just stand there and get damaged until they die. So you need to setup a defending warship. Allowing players to be able to tell ships to still defend themselves during mine asteroid or salvage order would allow those ships to last a little longer maybe a priority for orders (ex. attack if it can otherwise mine) In this example the ship would have to be able to toggle to attack if enemies warp in and it is mining. This could carry over to trade. (ex. Buy 500 copper at 90% otherwise buy 1000 platinum at 95%)
Factions:
-Factions growth: Factions seem very static at their current state. You either kill their stations and leave a sector void of life or try and protect their stuff for your own purposes. This carries over with factions wars. Helping either side serve little purpose if you have a good relations with both as helping them destroy the stations means they are gone forever. Giving the ability for factions to make more stations or upgrade their existing ones if inputs are always full and outputs are always empty would encourage more or a flexible synergy with factions and players. With the new boarding features this could also allow factions to take over other factions sectors. This could led to a faction getting very big giving it negative relations with nearby factions which could lead to war causing them to fracture into multiple smaller factions starting the process all over.
This would lead to some obvious issues about how a factions gets the upper hand which would probably lead to a need for a mechanic to prevent factions from being able to just spawn in ships whenever they want and instead having to have enough money to support more warship/civilian ships.
This would make the galaxy alive as in the recent patch notes it has been make apparent that the devs want it to feel more so.
-Traits/diplomacy: Faction traits could play into growth as well passive factions not wanting to go to war with bigger factions or aggressive being trigger happy. I know its been said that it is an upcoming feature and I think it could play into the negotiation in diplomacy. Perhaps you can get better standing with a faction provided you can fulfill their request. Maybe destroy rival factions headquarters or bring X amount of good Y to headquarters with no payment in return and instead simply reputation points.
-Faction borders: the only way to see which factions owns which sector currently is by either typing their name in the search or hovering over every sector which isn't as user friendly. A simple outline/border of surrounding all the sectors owned by a faction or their name bannered over their occupied space like EU4/stellaris would make this more visually appealing as if you have admired standing with 2 factions it is just be a blob of green.
-Pirate/player hyperspace blockers: I often see players complain about none stop pirates currently as the game stands their is no way to prevent xsotan and pirates to span other than modifying the files or perhaps mods. A station that prevents pirates and xsotan to span and perhaps even act a rift for players limiting their jump capabilities without good relations with the owner of the stations would be a neat way to prevent that from happening. This could be reliant on goods to keep working encouraging players to set up economies/trade routes to feed the blocker station instead of having more and more warships the debuff would go away if you can't keep it supplied.
-Headquarters: Headquarters don't do much as of right now other than for the guardian, going off the previous point of stations that consume goods to give players extra advantages perhaps one way to deal with accidental stray shots angering your home factions resulting in the entire region getting destroyed you could have the ability to have friendly fire off with that faction if you feed specific goods continuously. If you stop supplying it the debuff is lost and you can harm their ships/stations. The concept of the headquarters always kind of underwhelmed me. I think perhaps as a way to preventing a factions from spawning more ships could be if their headquarters is destroyed they can't warp in a fleet anymore or produce more ships if the mechanic to make ships is implemented.
Miscellaneous:
-Health in Fleet Tab: Sometimes things go wrong with your fleet and without warping to the sector they are in or getting a notification there is no way to know if they are ok. A health/shield bar for ships in the fleet tab would allow for more of an overview of your empire
-Save password for server: It is very tedious to have to enter the password for favorited servers everytime you join. A save password option should be implemented.
TL:dr
Factions should be able to colonize other sectors, and upgrade their stations.
Commands loops should be reworked.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
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