Ahdaymz

This approach could certainly be fun, but it seems to oppose the idea of large sci fi style ships, which I see as having the main branch style thruster drift correction. They basically always go where they are pointing unless the player wants them to slide in a particular direction (basically only for docking at low speeds). This seems right, to me. We have ships that don't require fuel and can jump to new sectors using magical technologies. Newtonian physics are already pretty far gone. Also, I can't see a really sleek looking capital ship sliding sideways forever until it changes direction. That seems wrong. Oh, but on a related note, I do think that gyro blocks are a good idea. Having more tools at our disposal to customize our ship's maneuverability will probably always be a good thing.

I think the way that thrusters reduce drift in the main branch is good. The only problem is that it prevents retrograde burn from being feasible. I do not like the beta branch solution to the retrograde problem (that is, no artifical drift reduction from thrusters). I would love to see the main branch build with directional thrusters and a different fix for the retrograde problem. Perhaps thruster drift correction could be scaled back to zero as the ship points closer to retrograde.

I'll weigh in and say I liked the simplified (and "unrealistic") flight features of before this patch. Simply adding directional thrusters to that build would be ideal IMO (this is the perfect answer to the pancake thruster problem). I honestly don't understand the fixation with the retrograde burn, which seems to be a big motivation for many of the latest changes. Of course it is "more realistic," but we're already so far from meaningful realism I think the game should just own it and make it fun. The idea of making a very sleek sci fi ship that you might find in Star Wars, Star Trek, etc... and then rotating 180 degrees to retrograde burn every time you need to stop from any significant speed I find to be ridiculous. I want to be able to zip around through asteroid fields and around ships and stations in any ship I make, as long as it can rotate fast enough. It becomes increasingly difficult to rotate large ships quickly enough for them to be this agile, and that is what should keep it balanced.

You know, I just noticed that this value is actually available for each turret in the build menu. If you select a turret and hover over a valid position on your ship, the Om. value is shown in green next to your ship stats. This is definitely helpful but it would be ideal if this value could be seen for all turrets at once, or just be slightly more accesible without having to select a turret, close the menu, and look over at a different section of the screen.

I definitely agree that being able to favorite turrets and upgrades would help a lot. This is typically paired with an, "Are you sure?" prompt when you try to sell a favorited item. Combine this with the ability to filter turrets and upgrades based on rarity, type, material, and stat values, and it gets 100% easier to outfit your ship. Also, each turret appears to have an, "Omicron," value which I assume is somehow related to damage per second (for damaging turrets anyway). This would be a useful stat to see to allow us to more quickly understand the overall usefulness of any particular turret.

It is certainly silly that thruster power scales only with surface area. It should probably be proportion of surface area and volume so you get thrust for the extra mass. This would somewhat nerf the thin thruster "exploit" but I think it would be balanced overall. Face thrust = (face surface area / block surface area) * block volume * thruster constant

Ha, well it's only useless if you don't want to do trading. If you want to be a merchant/trader you could build a very cool cargo ship for yourself.

How does having an unlimited player inventory for resources (Iron, Titanium, etc..) improve gameplay? Why shouldn't a player need to add cargo space to a mining ship to store mined metals? In my opinion, a player should be forced to design a mining ship with cargo space. A player who only wants to mine will never need to design cargo into their ship. Adding more considerations for the player to deal with can often add to challenge and reward, but only if the player accepts the premise behind those considerations. In this case, the premise is that resources take up space and need to be managed. Currently, as soon as the player (or their AI ship) mines and collects a resource, it is safe. The gameplay after the resource is mined is devalued because a disposable mining ship is easy enough to create and the resource does not need to be managed or protected. --- This idea goes hand in hand with the idea of ship building only in special locations (shipyards) as the game once was. This is another (related) problem with the value and challenge of certain parts of gameplay. Building and modifying a ship is meaningless because anyone can do it at any time. There is less value in any particular ship configuration, because it can be changed at any time. Players had complained that it was too inconvenient to find a shipyard, but rather than making everywhere a shipyard, a more elegant solution might be to provide better tools to find shipyards - or any other stations - through something like map filters. --- Naturally, these are all only my opinions. I'm not trying to force them on anyone else, only to see who might agree or disagree and why. So, thoughts?