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Go here, drop this off. Look around. Go here, drop this off. Look around. How about some missions with multiple parts? ex: "We are giving you these materials. Take it here and receive the items they process it into, then take it to this place and they will give you the money for it. Bring the money back here and we will give you X% of it" This not only gives you more to do (without LOOKING for more to do), it also gives more chances for adding extras into the mission -like a station manager trying to bribe you into saying you lost the cargo, pirates showing up to steal the money, or mercs hired by a competing corporation showing up to make you hand over the money before you bring it back. I don't need ALL the missions to be like this, but having missions like this available would be very welcome, in my view.

If any of you have ever played Portal 2, then you'd have a good idea of how a helpful, friendly persona can turn very, very unfriendly. Y'know in the tutorial, where the Adventurer apologizes for losing you your ship? There are two options: "That's all right" or "It's all your fault!" I propose dialogue options in every conversation with him that are either friendly and grateful or mean and spiteful. If a player decides to always be mean and spiteful, then the Adventurer will still help you, but grow more and more hurt as he sees what you're becoming: a galaxy-wide force. If, after the final boss fight, you have never been very nice to him, then he sends you an invitation to a conference. All the AI factions around the Barrier are called together by him in this conference, to address some growing fears of you becoming power-hungry. Every faction would be represented by one, super-powerful ship, and there would be one Station in the sector - the Tribunal. The Adventurer leads the proceedings, proposing that each faction that you ever helped/made allies with stand on one side of the station, and all that are opposed to you on the other side. The Adventurer holds sway in these proceedings - he's set the rules that if more are opposed than for, then all factions will band together against you. He himself can convince many AI factions to join either side, and this is where the kicker is. If you've been nice to him all along, then he will try to sway as many factions for you as he can. If you haven't, then he'll do everything he can to convict you. The player can, of course, influence the proceedings themselves - by being disrespectful in dialogue, they sway more to the side of the opposed; by being respectful and arguing well, they can sway more to their side. At the end of the proceedings, those who were opposed either start a galaxy-wide war with all your sectors, or, if you succeeded, the same thing happens - but some of the AI are on your side, and will help and assist you in the many large fleet actions to come. Were Boxelware to start working on something like this, I think it would be good for two reasons; one, it wouldn't take much more work than dialogue and designing one station, and two, whatever happens, the player will be introduced to empire-building. Whaddya think?