An Ning

Problem: Loot (and wrecks) are despawning too fast in and after large battles. An example is my latest fight against Swoks (I'm fighting him every 15 minutes, this guy's stalking me, I swear): I killed him and his fleet in about 90 seconds. While salvaging the second ship in the line (less than 5 minutes from entering the sector) loot was despawning -I'm assuming due to the number of items present in the sector (lots of dropped upgrades, torpedoes, etc). This can get annoying, and if crowding is the issue, this suggestion might help (suggestion here) : Upon destruction, ships drop "escape pods" and "armored vaults" (which do not despawn, and carry the color of the highest-tier item they possess) and carry the various loot from the ship's destruction -all the scrap and some alloy remains scattered for the "destruction" effect, and you can find more by luck if salvaging as you do now, but the majority of the "loot" is located in these small boxes that sit next to the wreck to reduce the amount of crowding in the sector and prevent the rushed despawning of loot and wreckage. A way to make it further reduce crowding would be for ships to simply "acquire" the escape pods and vaults with tractor beams, and allow players to "search" them at the end of the fight -akin to loot boxes in some other games.

Suggestion is as title states: I should see the names of the ships first on a map display, and if something gets cut off, it should be the class of the ship.

It just gets messy trying to see where everything is and keep track of it all with everything going into one box I'd suggest making some categories for the suggestions to be put into: Balance Suggestions Block Suggestions Weapon Suggestions Mission Suggestions Command and AI Suggestions Quality of Life Suggestions Something like that would make keeping track of suggestions easier

My current ship (iron/titanium tier of building) took 5% damage from fighting him just now -I didn't even shoot down most of the torpedoes that were launched -I just let them hit while blasting ships- and I also rammed him... 5% damage by the time they were all dead. Same ship in "The Missing Freighters"... I take 5% damage against a single enemy, nearly get killed because there's 6 of them per wave, and have to retreat and lure the enemy into 1 on 1 fights for 10 minutes. The standard pirates are nearly killing me. And the "pirate lord"... is a joke.... this isn't right Reduce the number of corvettes that show up in "the missing freighter" missions (to make them difficult, but not on par with Swoks), and buff Swoks' fleet a bit. My IDEAL solution would be to actually make Swoks a wave-based fight (ex: he sits back invulnerable and launches a wave of pirates, a wave of marauders and raiders, then a wave of corvettes at you before going after you himself -with a wave of raiders as backup) with the number of waves increasing based on the numeral at the end of Swoks' name. But really, any buff to his damage or his fleet's damage would be better... he's "a pirate lord" that everyone fears and talks about... he should be tougher than any common pirate mission in the iron/titanium sectors.

I am plenty engaged with maneuvering and watching the shots land. Having to guess where the enemy stringbean -I mean ship- is and try to shoot at it while I do that is more irritating than anything else (for me).

For when a suggestion gets answered -or when you realize there is already a suggestion like it (or when your suggestion is shown to be based off wrong info)

Isn't that done with the salvage command?

I use the notes all the time. I leave a "D" if I mined it to depletion, "CF" if there's a container field I haven't explored, "M" if I see a large mining asteroid, "CA" if there is a claimable asteroid, "W" if there are wrecks to salvage... I find it very useful.

Movement in combat may be useful, but when mining or salvaging, moving while firing just makes things take longer -since the turrets now have to move to try to fire again, may not be able to fire from the new position, and may only have a short time to fire before the ship moves again. I would suggest that, if told to mine or salvage, the autopilot performs a check to see if it is firing before moving, and if it is, disables movement until the next decision to move, where the check is made again. This would make mining and salvaging with autopilot much more efficient (and tolerable to watch)

I like the new hyperspace mechanic in 2.0. I also like dashing forward to jump to lightspeed. I note, however, that player ships are the only ones that do this. NPCs seem to sit still to charge up. And...sometimes... there's an asteroid field (or scrapyard) between me and the direction I want to jump...making boosting forward to jump... logically unsound. Suggestion: Enable W+space OR S+space to charge the hyperdrive, so player ships can boost into a jump, or slowly back away and jump, if something is in the way

So I have been playing 2.0 for a few hours, playing on a higher difficulty than usual (even got destroyed twice, which is kinda new to me) ...I still don't use gateways. The problem at hand: They are just too expensive for the distance they make you go -especially considering how long you need to travel in the sector to use them (it can take several minutes -literally enough time to jump out, back, and out again), especially in the early game, to go from one gate to another). Gateways as they are, seem to have no point. Because of the long distances between gates, it takes longer to get to a place by hopping through gates than by jumping. Add to that the fact that if you are making a $30k delivery and you use 10 gates, you lose $2k just going there, and gate travel just seems to be a very massive "why?" I've suggested before that gates be made cheaper and placed closer to the center of a sector so you can pop in and out within a half minute -and that idea was discarded, but I'm not suggesting that again. Here's what I am suggesting now: Add in some longer-range (and more expensive) trade-hub to trade-hub gateways in systems. Sort of like a gateway interstate (or like a cross-country flight followed by a local bus). Current gates seem to move you about 6 sectors on average, and seem to have a maximum distance of about 10. These "tradeway gates" would have a minimum sector movement of 12, and a maximum of about 23 -letting you make large hops across an area (for a fee) with these gates, then using the smaller gates (or a simple jump drive) to get to where you want to go locally. This would make gates logical and semi-useful (or at least make a gate that is useful) ...and would also make an interesting possible future aspect for faction conflict -where conflicts get larger in sectors with the trade gates, as they are, or go to, important systems in the faction's territory.

From the galaxy map, I can select a ship, and send it across a sequence of 30 specific sectors in a specific order. But, if I want it to do anything IN those sectors -like mine, or salvage, I have to enter the sector, give it the order to do it, then leave to galaxy map and go to the sector I want to be in. When it is done, I have to go to galaxy map (again), order it to move to the sector I want (again), enter the sector (again), give the order (again), then leave to where I actually want to be (again). Before, I could, from the ship I was controlling, go to galaxy map, and give a chain of orders for the ship to move to sector after sector in order to mine/salvage. This was far more efficient and streamlined -if I want to tell a ship to salvage 15 sectors, I have to do the above segment fifteen times (interrupting me whenever that ship finishes), as opposed to just shift-clicking 15 times in the galactic map. I suggest re-implementing a "mine/salvage current sector" command for ships in the galaxy map to bring this capability back. It was much faster, simpler, and more efficient.

It's a little weird going to a system with NOTHING in it, ad seeing a world with electric lights visible on its night side. I would suggest that, at the minimum, a station be present when a world with civilization on it is in the background. These could be a smaller station -a shuttle/ferry platform for people to go from orbit down planetside and vice versa, with not much more than the sector equivalent of a farmer's market and gas station. This would make the background seem less.... random and the galaxy more "lived in".

TLDR: Problem: Why can my ship only do things on its own when I am not aboard? Suggested Solution 1: All guns can fire by order, auto-turret systems simply increase damage when auto-firing since auto-turret aim is so crappy Suggested Solution 2: All guns can fire by order. Auto-turret system removes needing gunners to fire guns, as it makes the process automated. Main text for those that like reading: I love having turrets that shoot on their own. Love it (it especially makes salvaging so much nicer) But the pain of pre 2.0 remains: WHY CAN THE TURRETS SHOOT JUST FINE ON THEIR OWN WHEN I AM NOT ON THE SHIP!? (this is the problem that spurs the suggestion, by the way) I have gunners on the ship, THEY should fire the guns. Not only SHOULD they do it, but they DO -provided it's not the ship I'm on... which is ANNOYING. And the implementation of "well we can make them shoot on their own, but you need to use upgrade slots to do it if it's the ship you're controlling -BUT EVERY OTHER SHIP IN THE UNIVERSE DOESN'T NEED THIS" makes it more so. So please (here's the suggestion) Remove the auto-turret control system upgrades" and just let gunners shoot the guns. What do the gunners do, exactly, if they cannot fire the guns? I need them, but why? They just sit there until I fire the guns. Why do I have -and need- gunners? Let the gunners shoot. Let the miners mine. I should be able to do what I do with the "auto-turret control system", without that system being present. Now, if you want to make "auto-firing guns" need a little something extra, add in an upgrade part that increases the damage from auto-firing guns (something that's needed anyways, in my view, as the auto-firing guns have low enough accuracy that they turn a 30 second fight into a 2 minute losing battle) -ex: a "computer-assisted aim system" upgrade part) that increase damage by 2% (increasing with rarity-and make the effects stackable. Now I have a system that I may WANT to add onto my ship -but don't NEED to add onto my ship just to have it fight as it does without my presence. Another way to go about it, would be to make the "auto-turret control system", make the turrets ACTUALLY automatic, meaning you have a reduced crew requirement because your guns/mining lasers don't need gunners. Either of these would, in my opinion, be superior to the system that has been implemented (which is still better than the "independent targeting" weapons from before, by the way, just... still majorly flawed, in my view)

It was just a muse, and is bound to be an unpopular thought, but I found the idea that jumping with a severely damaged ship could cause damage to be intriguing -something that makes those mad dashes for the safety of lightspeed to be a risk in itself, rather than a simple solution. Ex (and these are just general ideas): At 50% hull integrity, jumping strains the ship's structure and causes further damage based on the length of the jump, causing damage or knocking out random systems -engines, integrity fields, energy generators -you will have shaken off pursuit, but paid a price. Below 30% hull integrity, making a jump will damage engines -effectively making it possible you get stranded in whatever system you jump to next

Nevermind, this isn't needed, there is already an in-game solution. This can be removed.

I mean they do say that they have sort of gotten used to their lifestyle. At the same time, I'd kinda like it if they'd send some kind of message at random points after saying that some of them wanted to return to active space, or asking you to bring them goods they don't have any more -maybe even repair a ship or two.

Overall, I like the ideas. Honestly, though... I never understood the cargo transporter thing at all. My miners can clearly hold the items -because my fighters have not changed since I put the transporter on my ship. Why do they need something on the carrier in order for them to grab what they are mining? Now, if fighters could only hold 1 item, and had to run back to the carrier to drop things off then go out again to grab more, and the transport system basically showed them vectors for "fly in this direction and drop it and we'll grab it", enabling them to not have to return to the carrier...then that would make more sense. Ideally, I think the transport system should have to be on the fighters themselves as well as the carrier -make it some kind of short-range teleporter or something.

Two suggestions to kind of liven up the galaxy: 1) Docking request In order to dock with a station, you have to contact them and ask to dock (The station keeps track of how many docks it has and grants or denies docking based on the number of docks available). 2) Docking size limitation The idea for this is that ships over a certain mass (either flat mass, or mass relative to the station) are unable to "dock" to a station, and must instead stay within a certain range and have shuttles load or offload their goods -much the way that a ship too large for a harbor has to offload to a smaller ship and have that shuttle things back and forth.

That's kinda what I was hoping for, yeah. Would also make it so that you could make a ship specifically to haul containers and have them be a reasonable size. Currently docks have to be spaced out by something like 300 meters in order to not fight each other. Fine for stations, but with container docking being a thing for ships...

I saw on the Steam forums a while ago that there was no intent to make torpedoes something you could produce. Would be cool, but like chairs in minecraft, the devs said they don't want it.

Cool. I guess consider this one answered/closed, then (I'd delete it, but I don't see the option)

You could always just let the ship decide. The docks already search for what is in range for them. Just have the ship say "okay, these 10 CAN activate, use this 1 for the selected target" Then that dock becomes the only active dock until the target is switched

The "ship in distress" signals are fun, but they feel one-dimensional. You show up, see a bunch of ships getting completely trashed, save them, and the damaged ships afterward say "thank you" then just.. stay there. Like I said... fun.. but flat. First, I suggest making the dialogue change based on your standing with the faction the ship belongs to. Here's an example: Ally: Wow, I can't believe you came to help! You're everything they say you are! Please, accept this as our thanks! I can't wait to tell everyone about this! Good Relations: Thank you for coming to save us. It's no wonder you're so highly regarded back home! Here. This is for helping us. I'll be sure to let everyone know that you are someone they can rely on. Neutral: We were starting to think no one would come. Thank you. Here is something to show our appreciation. We will let others know that you can be relied on to help in situations. Unfriendly: You may not have known who we were when you heard our distress call.. but you saved us on purpose. Maybe you're not as bad as they say. Here. Take this as a token of our thanks. Hostile: Of all people the galaxy could send to help us it was you. Take this for helping and go. This helps the galaxy feel a bit more alive, but doesn't help the initial problem of the missions feeling unfulfilling. Thus my second suggestion for this: When the player contacts the ships again after the fight, their standing with the faction may (perhaps a 1/2 chance of happening) enable a second part to the mission ex: Ally-Neutral: Yeah, we were hurt pretty bad. Do you have any repair turrets on you? If not, maybe you could spare some materials for repairs? Unfriendly: Look, I have a busted ship and some hurt crew. I can offer you some compensation if you have something that can help. Hostile: Shove off! Bad enough you saved us, now you want to rub our noses in it? Get off this channel! (No further mission available) And possibly a third follow-on section (maybe 1/3 chance of happening), also dependent on faction relation, if the player contacts them again ex: Ally: Thank you for your assistance, we're able to get moving again. I'm worried about getting hit again on the way to (X,Y). Do you think you can escort us? We'll be sure you're compensated, of course. Friendly: Thank you, we are finally all under way. Without our escorts, though.... you've helped us twice already, might we ask you aid us a third time? We're heading to (X, Y). Can you help make sure we get there? Neutral: Thank you for helping us get repaired. We need to see to our wounded before we depart the sector. (no further mission available) Unfriendly: We'll be going soon. You can leave whenever you want..... and... thanks. (No further mission available) Hostile: ....go away (No further mission available) *sub-mission available: Pester the Hostile ship* Hostile: ...I said go away Hostile: beat it! Hostile: We have escorts coming! We don't need you! Go! Hostile: Stop calling us! Hostile: Are you deaf!? Get off this channel! Hostile: If you're still here when our escort arrive, I'm telling them to shoot you! Hostile: That's it! Escort Group! Fry this guy!

Easiest solution in my head is when you hit the toggle for "single dock" you click which one you want to activate. I think that's the same system we use for undocking individual containers