Hello!
Recently just came across this nifty little game through 4chan/vg/.
Thank you for offering this fun little gem at a reasonable price. My eyes were initially on Blockade Runner when they started out, but, I think they required a subsciption to keep getting updates.
Anyways, been discussing the game a bit with other channers.
As a life-long gamer, sci-fi fan, and enginerd, here are a few of my thoughts on suggestions from a few solid days of playing. Not that any of them have to be taken as they are, any idea is up for discussion, but these are things I think would bring the game more balance and direction in terms of multiplayer particularly.
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-Everybody started in a common sector, perhaps (0,0,0) to begin with. Let the shops have some turrets for their own defense, and to offer some protection to players. Could be overpowered by capital ships though; would offer mildly safe areas.
-Everybody starts with minimal amounts of credits, enough for each to make simple 1-man skiffs. Cooperative play will have stark advantages, and players can meet at station to band-together into rag-tag crews of privateers.
-Personnel items; environmental suits, scientific instruments (like beacons and scanners), and even weapons for player-to-player conflict. Then factions could raid bases in-person, and even board on another's ships.
-Adjust the credit-rate of materials to their value by use, not solely by market-presence. Selling ice or cactus to a space station for millions of credits is silly.
-Inventory items need to count towards a ship's weight. Hauling hundreds of blocks of minerals, components, and ship parts? It should count towards the mass of your ship. Really, the player should only get the 10 hotkey slots, and all other storage ought to require those Plexibins (or whatever they're called).
-Cooling needs to be introduced as a game element, to balance the inherent favor for large-scale systems. Right now, there's no reason to -not- build to the maximum scale of size, because it carries no major disadvantages. It'd be nice if, as you increase the size of your systems that draw power, they would produce more heat as they are used or remain active, and you wound need "coolant tanks" to supply "coolant channels" adjacent other systems to dissipate their heat. Overheating could perhaps temporarily disable a system, or if close to the core could cause it to overheat.
-Large ships also need their acceleration tweaked to reflect their momentum. A capital ship having the same acceleration as a one-man skiff is just dumb.
-It'd be nice if the planets were a little larger in scale. I don't mind them being flat, as omnidirectional orientation to gravity would be tricky to implement, but right now their size makes them feel like more of a novelty.
Whoever that dude was that made the gigantic mining-vessel...I don't think a planet would stand any more of a chance than some asteroid fragment out in space, and I think it's a problem of the planets' scale.
Needs to have a lesser frequency of planets, in exchange for more expansive planets, maybe 4 to 5 times the size they are now. Something to the effect that most planets will typically never be out-sized by a ship.
Also needs to have greater gravitational effects, such that bringing large vessels close presents a hazard to being pulled in. It'd be ridiculous to have a faction war, and have some huge-honkin' ship just hovering over firing lasers all day. A ship too small would be useless in firepower, and a ship too big ought to be at risk of falling to far into the gravity field. G = mM/r^2 and all that business. Orbital bombardment ships and landing craft would have an optimal sizes. Again, just to balance the "Bigger is better, always" nuance of this game.
Recently just came across this nifty little game through 4chan/vg/.
Thank you for offering this fun little gem at a reasonable price. My eyes were initially on Blockade Runner when they started out, but, I think they required a subsciption to keep getting updates.
Anyways, been discussing the game a bit with other channers.
As a life-long gamer, sci-fi fan, and enginerd, here are a few of my thoughts on suggestions from a few solid days of playing. Not that any of them have to be taken as they are, any idea is up for discussion, but these are things I think would bring the game more balance and direction in terms of multiplayer particularly.
_______________________________________________________________
-Everybody started in a common sector, perhaps (0,0,0) to begin with. Let the shops have some turrets for their own defense, and to offer some protection to players. Could be overpowered by capital ships though; would offer mildly safe areas.
-Everybody starts with minimal amounts of credits, enough for each to make simple 1-man skiffs. Cooperative play will have stark advantages, and players can meet at station to band-together into rag-tag crews of privateers.
-Personnel items; environmental suits, scientific instruments (like beacons and scanners), and even weapons for player-to-player conflict. Then factions could raid bases in-person, and even board on another's ships.
-Adjust the credit-rate of materials to their value by use, not solely by market-presence. Selling ice or cactus to a space station for millions of credits is silly.
-Inventory items need to count towards a ship's weight. Hauling hundreds of blocks of minerals, components, and ship parts? It should count towards the mass of your ship. Really, the player should only get the 10 hotkey slots, and all other storage ought to require those Plexibins (or whatever they're called).
-Cooling needs to be introduced as a game element, to balance the inherent favor for large-scale systems. Right now, there's no reason to -not- build to the maximum scale of size, because it carries no major disadvantages. It'd be nice if, as you increase the size of your systems that draw power, they would produce more heat as they are used or remain active, and you wound need "coolant tanks" to supply "coolant channels" adjacent other systems to dissipate their heat. Overheating could perhaps temporarily disable a system, or if close to the core could cause it to overheat.
-Large ships also need their acceleration tweaked to reflect their momentum. A capital ship having the same acceleration as a one-man skiff is just dumb.
-It'd be nice if the planets were a little larger in scale. I don't mind them being flat, as omnidirectional orientation to gravity would be tricky to implement, but right now their size makes them feel like more of a novelty.
Whoever that dude was that made the gigantic mining-vessel...I don't think a planet would stand any more of a chance than some asteroid fragment out in space, and I think it's a problem of the planets' scale.
Needs to have a lesser frequency of planets, in exchange for more expansive planets, maybe 4 to 5 times the size they are now. Something to the effect that most planets will typically never be out-sized by a ship.
Also needs to have greater gravitational effects, such that bringing large vessels close presents a hazard to being pulled in. It'd be ridiculous to have a faction war, and have some huge-honkin' ship just hovering over firing lasers all day. A ship too small would be useless in firepower, and a ship too big ought to be at risk of falling to far into the gravity field. G = mM/r^2 and all that business. Orbital bombardment ships and landing craft would have an optimal sizes. Again, just to balance the "Bigger is better, always" nuance of this game.
