Thundercraft's Feedback

[Thundercraft]

I thought that I would start a thread as one place to share most of my feedback and suggestions. Mostly, this will be little things that I found frustrating and suggestions on how it could be improved.

 

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Pickup Behavior: Don't pick up stolen cargo

 

What does that even mean?

 

Whatever it does, this option did not prevent me from accidentally picking up illegal cargo. As such, that option felt misleading.

 

I finally got a chance to salvage a wreck, which I what I've been desperate to try even before I bought the game. And all these cargo containers flew out... which I could not pick up. Alright, it's my own fault for not having cargo space on my ship. I add some and manage to collect some cargo. Great! So, I wander around the starting system to see where I can sell it... And I'm stopped by a warning from a nearby ship!

 

Apparently, what I picked up was "guns", which I did not have a permit for. (There was no warning message about that when I picked them up. I didn't even know what my ship hauled in.) So, I got a big fat fine for my trouble instead of turning a profit. And it was about this time that my crew demanded to be paid...

 

It felt surreal to be threatened and fined by the local faction... which are pirates! Why should pirates even care about the legalities of transporting guns without a permit? Why would they enforce that? They're pirates! You know, anarchist types who trade in black market items and illegal goods on a regular basis?

 

Anyway, it would be very much appreciated if there was "Don't pick up illegal cargo" and "Don't pick up stolen or illegal cargo" options under Pickup Behavior. And please consider adding an exception to the check for illegal cargo if the ship or system in question belongs to a pirate faction. Otherwise... that seems silly and frustrating.

 

Also, is there some way we can get an indication of the identity of the cargo pods we see floating in space? I'm sure that I'm not the only player who would greatly appreciate knowing what it is before trying to retrieve it. Knowing would go a long ways toward deciding if it's worth the trouble.

 

Then again, we don't have a say so, do we? Merely flying by floating cargo pods of guns is enough for our ship to automatically haul them aboard, without our say so.

 

For that matter, how about a hotkey to press to activate a tractor beam or scoop to gather floating cargo? I'd like some control over this. Even better: Can't we get some game mechanism which would allow players to selectively haul in only certain types of cargo?

[Dinosawer]

FYI, you're not obliged to pay the fine, you can fight or run

[Thundercraft]

FYI, you're not obliged to pay the fine, you can fight or run

 

I saw that option. And this mirrors the behavior of other space games. However, my ship is really no match for them (yet). Regardless, I suspect skipping out on a fine isn't worth the drop in faction favor or making them an enemy.

[Dinosawer]

Your ship doesn't need to be a match if you're fast enough :)

And you shouldn't worry to much about antagonising pirates - they're pirates :P

[Thundercraft]

Another frustration / suggestion:

 

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Please, please give us an easy way to either find wreckages or a way to scroll through only ships. I beg you!

 

AFAIK, if we want to find a wreckage somewhere in our system (i.e., to salvage) we have two options:

1. [*]Find it with our own two eyes. And this is not necessarily easy considering how big and how crowded some systems are with ships, stations, and asteroids.

[*]Keep pressing the [Tab] key for 'Next target' until a wreckage comes up. This isn't easy, either, considering how the "\" shortcut for 'Previous target' is broken - as in, this does not work. (Must be a bug!) Without 'Previous target' working, I'm constantly frustrated by pressing 'Next target' too fast and skipping over it. But even if it worked, this is a huge hassle for systems with literally hundreds or thousands of asteroids! Scrolling through to find a wreckage is like finding a needle in a haystack!

Now that I think about it: Perhaps there's a 'System' I've yet to find to help locate wrecks?

 

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While I'm at it, I also want to point out that it would be super nice to have an easy way to locate dropped resources like minerals, cargo pods, or Systems. How about renaming "Systems" to something else like "Add-ons" or "Upgrades" (to avoid confusion) and adding a 'System Map' so we can actually have a picture of the star system we're in? Such a map would allow the game to show little dots representing enemy ships, neutral ships, friendly ships, cargo pods, "Add-ons", etc...

[Naggerknife]

If you zoom out you can get a nice pan view of the system your in and use the arrow keys to pan around in this screen. I use it all the time!

[Tajin]

If you zoom out you can get a nice pan view of the system

 

Early in the game I always found myself wishing for a list of radar contacts like in EVE until I discovered this by accident.

 

That should really be mentioned in the tutorial !

 

 

... a list of contacts in the system would still be useful though.

[Naggerknife]

So there is a trade module that shows all contacts in the sector and selects it for you.