Fatsack

Ones i'm excited most about are new sector types, faction improvements, and better RTS controls

I think there should be a hotkey i can press to make the current ship im in fly to and dock or fly through, or just approach, whatever I currently have targeted. Instead of opening the tactical menu and finding the thing in the list and then focusing it and then selecting my ship and then giving the move command. I wish there were just a button I could press to automatically fly through whatever gate i have targeted or dock with whatever station i have targeted.

When you let go of shift or ctrl on build mode, it loses the shape of the surface you were trying to match it to. I want a hotkey that remembers the shape, so you can then tweak it, like stretching it over nearby blocks that were flush with the parent block.

Could also be implemented by finding a wormhole that takes you off the galaxy map to a corridor style 'dungeon' of sectors, each with a unique challenge and event like a series of rooms, with a boss or puzzle at the end and a reward. These 'dungeon' maps could be scrubbed once you leave being like a one time opportunity. Maybe the lore is these wormholes lead to other 'whens' or other 'dimensions'.

I made a similar suggestion like this. I upvoted. I think making procedurally generated quest chains for each faction, and making each faction unique via an array of randomly assigned trait's that influence things like missions, rewards, reactions to different actions, etc. would vastly improve the discovery and feel of the galaxy. I also think this, coupled with planetary "away-missions" would be a good way to flesh out lore, world-building, and discovery.

I like the new zoom feature when holding right mouse button and aiming turrets. I think adding this functionality during the dialogues with other ships/characters while they're talking to you, letting you zoom in and examine in detail the ship or station that is talking to you, would be a nice touch. Perhaps you could even put a 'bridge' block on npc's that has a backlight and a silhouette animation of different humans/aliens/robots or something that you can zoom in a see gesturing during the dialogue. That would be sweet. Also adding in skins for blocks, and modding support to add in more skins and have the modded skins you subscribe to automatically distributed on NPCs would give you more to look at and examine and create more uniqueness to the universe.

Could even be beneficial ones too. Like ancient nanite clouds that auto-repair some damage on your ship. Or places you can gather resources like hydrogen, or nitrogen etc.

You guys have built a very interesting and dynamic economy system. It would be great if there were more options on how to manipulate and exploit it. For instance, Blockades - on wormhole sectors, gate sectors or factory sectors, effectively cutting them out of the trade network, and the shifts in supply/demand this would lead to that could be exploited by the player. This would hurt the players standing with the faction, or perhaps bribe one faction to do it to another faction. Corsairs - Some way for the player to hire mercenaries or pirates to attack specific targets like a major factory that supplies the surrounding region, thus reducing the supply, which could be exploited by the player, while not destroying the players reputation with that faction. You could assign your own or your alliance ships to the pirates to use or something like that to increase likelihood of success. Industrial Saboteurs - Hire pirates or mercenaries or buy computer viruses or some other form of industrial sabotage from outlaw outposts to transfer to a factory or other station to temporarily halt production, reduce the supply or demand for a trade good, destroy stored cargo, steal cargo or credits, or create a demand for specific trade goods, on a station, with a percent chance of being found out. Cartels - Secret alliances with certain factions, traders or just certain stations/factories within factions, to create monopolies on specific trade goods. Maybe add in 'merchant' factions that operate certain trade routes, that you can collude with. Create blacklists to boycott trade from certain suppliers, or deals to supply parts under market value, depending on relations with the merchant factions, in exchange for completing missions or attacking another faction or something. All of these things could be targeted toward the player by hostile factions as well. Like in Civilization 6, where the better a nation is doing, the more likely the other nations are to team up against it.

You could make it so you have to build a bunch of large stations in several sectors, and have the sectors you build in target a sector between them. Like an 8 sector ring, with the target sector being the 9th sector in the middle of a 3x3 square of sectors, and what you get is determined by the skybox, material zone (radius from center of galaxy), faction territory, or whatever else is in or affecting the target sector.

This is a great idea. Sort of like 'away missions' for crew, that you can supplement with trade goods, i.e. munitions, tanks, robots, planes, vehicles, etc. Maybe have different scenarios where different goods would benefit the away team, with different rewards. Could be like an economic mini-game gambling etc. I would draw inspiration from things like planet sieges in 4x games like endless space, or in a game called 'crying suns' where you have away teams led by a named unique character that is an 'officer' with different traits and abilities. Maybe these could be your 'captains' or 'heros' or something.

'Away Missions' would be cool. Have some station or space elevator platform where you can initiate an event where you choose how much crew to send 'security' or otherwise, to a planets surface or to some ancient space ruins or something. It would have some narrative and storytelling and give you a series of choices to make for the away team that affects how many of them survive, and what rewards you get. Maybe they require different types of trade goods or cargo you can send with them to improve their odds or give more options to choose from or something, like skill checks in rpg dialogs etc.

Volumetric Hazards or other obstacles would certainly make sectors more diverse, memorable, and challenging. Some Ideas: Solar flares that you have to evade to avoid damaging your systems, leaves the hull/armor untouched. Like evacuating the sector within a countdown timer, like time trial race. Or you have to find 'shade', opposite the star, behind an asteroid that's bigger than your ship. Could scale this to multiple sector areas on the galactic map for 'supernovae' events where you have to escape the area or get systems damage, dead crew, or other such things. This could create ore rich sectors afterwards as a reward. Speeding meteors/comets to dodge like traffic. Different volumetric nebulae that disable different kinds of weapons, systems, and shields. Or they could damage/destroy cargo, crew, or hull/armor the longer you stay in them. Or just 'smoke clouds' that obscure view and sensor readings. Neutron stars or black holes rendered on the skybox, with a 'wind' type effect that pulls your ship toward them, so you have to 'sail against the wind' and compensate your flying because of the additional acceleration vector from the gravity source affecting your ship. Magnetic minefields with mines that slowly float toward your ship if you get too close. Making smaller faster ships easier to fly through, but larger ships would get pummeled. Space 'infestations' such as flying through nebulae of corrosive acids, or importing organic infestations via looting, that you have to visit a station to repair or purge, to remove (trouble with tribbles episode of star trek), like a 'disease' would affect a character in a survival game and they need a certain medicine or npc to cure it. Could apply a debuff and generate a quest/mission showing where to go to 'fix' it. 'Away missions', where there is a space platform, or a large planet in the skybox, and you can send some of your crew to the surface or to the structure. This could enable a narration story and a series of choices for you to make which would determine what happens to the crew and any rewards you receive. Good way to add plot and flesh out the galaxies lore. Maybe market it toward 'faction' story lines, depending on the which factions territory it takes place in, or between factions if it's in a border region. Maybe 'tag' factions with different keywords or descriptors that would determine which kinds of stories could play out in that territory. More events. They don't have to be combat related, could just be funny quirky easter eggs or unique handcrafted landmarks, like the actual station that spells out 'avorion' on the title screen appearing randomly in an otherwise empty sector, fun/weird stuff like that.

First off, AMAZING GAME! Well done it is very fun and addicting, especially the supply demand economy, it's like a giant puzzle, I love it. Obviously you're still working on polish so I made a thread on reddit asking for QoL suggestions. Here is my QoL suggestion thread from reddit, it got some decent participation. My main frustration with the game atm is with command chains. Often when a ship runs into an error, it just stops in the middle of the command chain, and there is no way to make changes to the command chain without destroying the entire thing. It would be nice if: you could select and adjust commands in a command chain without destroying it/li] save and reuse command chains or ctrl+z to undo changes or losses to command chains there was automatic path-finding on the galactic map so you didnt have to specify every jump you could issue a command to use an unexplored gate or wormhole