Even More Feedback.

[RoboAV]

The reward chest:

So, you spend 2, 4 or 6 hours wrangling a sector into shape. You fight monsters, pick off a minor species and eventually join your allies fleet to finish off whoever remains. Throughout this process, you are grabbing TONS of components. TONS.

Now, you've won the sector and are properly awash in anticipation for the reward all this hard work has earned. You open your reward chest and... six more components. Oh... that's just like killing a monster.

Granted, since 9.07, I have found a few useable items in the reward chest. nothing mind-blowing, but useable. Call me jaded, but the reward chest is just another item drop.

How about upgrades? The chest has one, two or three slots you can put items into and the chest upgrades them. Have a common power plant that you are using? Pop it in the chest now you have a very rare power plant. I would love to see upgrades. Make it interesting. Maybe one slot will increase rarity (with associated bonuses stats: +7 thrust, etc..), one slot will increase the base ability (your power plant now has +100 power load) or one slot decreases power load (by how much? I'm no game designer, just a guy making unreasonable demands on a message board!).

Other ideas: command points. Base ship energy. base resistances. Structure points. Attack or defense value. Tweak my find chance. Tweak it hard.


Crew:

How many crew do you generally have/have equipped? Personally, I try to keep my crew to 2 + 1 (race specific slot). Of course, that never really works... Most of the time, I'm running 3 + 1 crew and saving up crew points in order to get rid of one to free up a light slot, while still able to run my equipment.

That dynamic conflicts directly with my other strategy of saving up crew points to dump into the command stat.

I really don't know how to feel about crew. I love them for allowing me bigger guns, engines, etc... I hate them for taking up slots that I want to put components in.

Not to mention the 4-6 crew in waiting; taking up space in the cargo hold, cause I just can't let them go. But that's my problem.

Radar & Minimap:

Is this really useful? In combat, do you check the minimap to see the position of enemies? The description for radar reads something like, 'how far away blips appear on the minimap.' Does it do anything else? What radar should do is increase the scope of the minimap.

Here's what i use the minimap for. Mowing the fog. Spotting planets that are just offscreen. If you put the fog on the main game screen, I wouldn't have to spend so much of my exploratory flying time staring intently at that little corner of the screen and ignorig the big, beautiful backgrounds you have created. The minimap is what? 20% larger than the mainscreen? For the minimap to be useful, I need it to be an actual map- or something close- of the solar system that I can use to navigate instead of opening the map screen to fix my position. Put arrows at the edge of the minimap that indicate where the starlanes (that I've discovered) are.

Those little question marks:

What purpose does 'identifying' serve? It seems like a pure time waster. I fill up my cargo bay and go to planet to trade, whereupon i play the 'how fast can i identify all the items' game. This is not fun. Is it there so i don't change components mid-combat? If so, then it's redundant as components already have an install time. If it's meant to add an extra thrill as i tremble in anticipatory glee for the what the component is... That's not working for me. I've not played any of the other Soldak games, but if this is a holdover from the fantasy trope of identifying magic items... let it go.


There's another $.02 from me. As usual, love the game. Love the constant patches. Keep up the great work.

[PixelLord]

Thanks for excellent feedback!

[Chumpy]

Originally Posted by RoboAV

The reward chest:

So, you spend 2, 4 or 6 hours wrangling a sector into shape. You fight monsters, pick off a minor species and eventually join your allies fleet to finish off whoever remains. Throughout this process, you are grabbing TONS of components. TONS.

Now, you've won the sector and are properly awash in anticipation for the reward all this hard work has earned. You open your reward chest and... six more components. Oh... that's just like killing a monster.

Agreed. Considering how much work goes into clearing out a sector, reward chests feel pretty unrewarding. You can open a reward chest and get nothing you want! At least give a big EXP bonus or something.

How many crew do you generally have/have equipped? Personally, I try to keep my crew to 2 + 1 (race specific slot). Of course, that never really works... Most of the time, I'm running 3 + 1 crew and saving up crew points in order to get rid of one to free up a light slot, while still able to run my equipment.

That dynamic conflicts directly with my other strategy of saving up crew points to dump into the command stat.

I really don't know how to feel about crew. I love them for allowing me bigger guns, engines, etc... I hate them for taking up slots that I want to put components in.

Not to mention the 4-6 crew in waiting; taking up space in the cargo hold, cause I just can't let them go. But that's my problem.

What level are you? When you get to higher levels, you'll probably need to spend two light slots on energy chargers. All my light slots go to energy and crew.

[RoboAV]

Originally Posted by Chumpy

What level are you? When you get to higher levels, you'll probably need to spend two light slots on energy chargers. All my light slots go to energy and crew.

I've got 2 ships I alternate between. Not exact, but 28 level Utopian and 30 level Human. I generally find a battery (medium) and a good harvester (light) takes care of my energy needs. With judicious use of energy consumable, of course.

[aReclusiveMind]

What about if finishing a sector rewarded us with what we REALLY want... which is more command points. I'm not sure what number of command points people would deem fair, but it would certainly be worthwhile.

Another idea would have finishing a sector level up all of your crew, which in turns would increase your available stats. This would also make crew that have been through multiple sectors with you that much more valuable.