More first impressions (warning: incoming tl;dr)

[namsherf]

Pardon me as I input my own $0.02..  I've put in probably around 8 hours so far, and this is what I see so far..

I concur with others on the graphics and performance - everything looks beautiful, the textures mesh incredibly well, and the cartoony portraits don't detract too much.  ;-)  However, the threaded (or not?) world save still induces momentary lag and a disruption of gameplay.  The music stays on tempo, but the timing used in movement/combat doesn't realize that multiple frames have been skipped during world save and thinks you suddenly got a decent boost in dV.  (FYI, Quad Core i7, 24GB, Win7 x64, GTX670, SSD)

Conversation system is cool.  Dialog could use a touch of editing, but the game it still alpha.  Not only forgivable, but encouraging to see expandable systems in place.  Kudos.

Multiple levels of each equipment type adds to the fun.  Also, almost every upgrade perceivably changes the gameplay feel.  Good balancing in that aspect, but not sure how this will scale in the future.  (The "best" of the RCS systems gives the smallest and lightest ships incredible handling, but if you want to expand the RCS system availability later.. what do you do? Ship-specific or Tier-specific upgrades?  Don't mind me, just being overly analytical!) :-D 

Another kudo: combat ships (with upgraded RCS/thrusters) are fast and responsive, and the Freighter - with the same equipment - still feels like a dump truck.  Freighter with basic equipment is unbearable - as is proper.    (And a Freighter should never turn on a dime..)  Only concern - auto-docking with a freighter from an oblique angle may take a long, long, long time for it to spiral in to the docking terminus.

Core gameplay - the flying and fighting - was a little difficult to get used to, but it's an acquired skill.  I can now complete the first mission without dying 10x just from practice. ;-)  Lead your targets, keep tabs on your rotation given the firing line hints and keep oriented on your target.  Avoid fixed-position weapons, they're much too hard to actually hit the target.  Turrets ftw!

Speaking of dying.. there is currently no death penalty.  This seems.. unbalanced..  Maybe a grace period of X levels, then loss increases slowly until level Y, then full death loss (some/all money or cargo/items) after that?  This is tough to balance - you don't want to penalize someone so much that their character of 50 hours real-time becomes useless due to a run of bad luck or playing while impaired..

Character progression in some ways is good, other ways puzzling.  The entire Engineering tree has direct and immediately discernable affects.  The Piloting much less so.  A 1% difference in RCS speed is below human perception, and a 5% increase might be perceivable, depending on the fitting.  It takes many, many more "points" to fully level up Piloting than all other disciplines put together.
However, a level-locked ship piloting tier works wonderfully.  Making some piloting skills a prerequisite for cargo hold optimization/expansion seems odd, but I trust you have a valid reason :-)  "Social" skills gaining cost reduction of repairs/refueling seems a good idea, but a touch useless due to the aforementioned lack of death penalty.

I understand this is all strictly "placeholder", but you've got some really great ideas in here that would be perfect in a finished product.  And some of the things may just need minor tweaks and shouldn't be thrown out.  Please understand this is all constructive criticism - we all can make this system work, then by all means don't throw away something slightly imperfect in favor of something completely different just because people are "complaining" about it. ;-)

As for monetary balance.. I can spend 1 hour mining and earn maybe half of what I can earn from selling rat loot.  Experience gain is much, much faster when mining, but the description on the Prospector character creation page talks about MONEY.. which I don't see. ;-)  And once you have a big enough ship and fittings, nothing I've seen can really touch you ratting.  That being said, you have to rat for a long, long time to get enough loot to sell for the next fitting.  (i.e. High payout drops are semi-rare.) About that point I turned to "long distance" courier missions for 5K a pop.  Which might need some balance too.. 2 systems away = 5K?  With a fast, light ship this takes a minute or 2 MAX, and the biggest shield yet (that I've seen) requires about 40K: that's 8 missions, maybe 15-30 minutes.  This would take a significantly longer ratting in a heavy frig/light cruiser or even strip mining in a Freighter with a pair of 3rd tier mining lasers.. unless I'm missing something.  Kinda makes sense if you're wanting to reward exploration.  Just remember: you get more of what you subsidize.  (i.e. if you want more exploration and roaming, the reward that more than sitting in one place staring at rocks.)

Speaking of mining.. it feels good.  Kinda boring as it should be, but with enough required continual interaction that "AFK mining" will not be a reality.  (Gotta keep mashing them buttons!) Speaking of, starting the mining laser and opening a window (skills, journal, etc.) allows you to take your fingers off the mining laser key - the cycle will finish even if you close the window.

One slight problem with freelance mining missions.. I've had them give missions to mine more at one time than my ship will hold, yet not allow me to put the cargo in the hangar and still complete the mission.  And then not be able to finish/abort/get rid of the mission?

There are a couple things not made immediately clear in any game documentation or forum posts that I've seen:
1) the meaning of the symbols in the left/right of the System Hover Tooltip.  In the Galaxy view, hover over a system.. it'll give you the name, the faction, a crossed-swords number, a gear number, and the presence of stations/asteroids.  Very nice, but what do those numbers mean?
2) item/ship availability - how to know where to go for a new hull, bigger fittings, etc.
3) what is the real gameplay difference between the Civilian Radar and the Radar Basic 50?
4) where are the Boosters that INCREASE cargo space?  (No, +96% is not enough for me! Mahaha!!)
5) how do I turn on ship self-repair after buying the skill? (Combat Consumables)
6) How do you even get into the alien area?

That's about all I can think of at the moment.

To sum up: great game even in its early stages.  Very glad I paid the full $15 for it.  Looking forward to seeing it grow in the future.  I might even have to buy copies for a few friends and start twisting arms.. 

[DLirry]

Okay, first of all - thanks for your feedback, LOTS of great ideas, suggestions and commentaries.

Next, I'd like to make a couple of my own comments, if it helps.

1. Momentary lag on savegame - yes, it exists, but, unfortunately, we can't do much about it. It's already threaded, but it still needs time to
make a complete snapshot of all inventories, ships, scripts, etc. - and during this process world shouldn't change, or it will break system's integrity.
But we will try to improve this lag, maybe improve client's reaction to such a thing.

2. Conversation system - of course, all dialogs need editing. That's probably because we're not native english-speakers.
But we have good news - we've found an english-speaking editor, and, probably, very soon all dialogs will be much better =)

3. Right now all equipment bonuses are unbalanced. We just wanted to give players a feel of how to control cheap ships and cool endgame heavy ships. All our equipment bonuses and equipment gradation, of course, will be rebalanced.

4. About freighter =) We have a big plans for roleplay for freighters, so it needs to be a dump truck. Right now roles for this ship just aren't implemented.
Freighter shouldn't be a universal ship, it should server only one purpose - to transport goods from one point to another. And, of course, that should be a difficult task.
Just imagine: you took freighter ship, bought a LOT of cargo and then, on cruise mode, avoided all pirates and delivered goods. That's not cool.
Personally, I think, that if you took freighter, you should hire mercenaries to guard you. It can be your friend, or just some npcs.

5. Fighting and flying. Yes, it's kinda hardcore, but it's not because of some design flaws, it was made this way.
As you can see, our RPG system doesn't affect combat gameplay as much, as in usual RPGs (like Diablo), where difference between 10th level and 30th level is a chasm. For example, heavy fighter with almost no skills (except the ones needed to equip this kind of hull) has pretty good chances against the same heavy fighter, but with all of skills taken.
So, character experience still matters, but player's experience matters too. As in most action games.

6. Death penalty - is something we will implement very very soon. We just can't agree on what this penalty should be =) If you have any suggestions, feel free to share)

7. Character progression - is under development. There will be much more skills, of course, maybe even with crafting, leadership, negotiations, weapon specialities. We have great plans on that)

8. Okay, first of all - we have a big plans for mining. Right now all you can do with ore is to sell it. But it won't be like this forever. We're planning to implement some kind of crafting system. Maybe, even space station and turrets building.
Now, money rewards for quests or items are unbalanced, but we're working on it.

9. Mining missions are disaster right now. But in one of the following updates we will work on our quest system, clean and improve all quests, so this bug we will fix.

Okay, now for questions:
1. That information will be in help and pedia, but now I can tell:
Gear symbol means technical level (level items, which are sold on stations)
Swords symbol means level of enemies.

2. Better hulls are sold in systems with higher tech level.

3. Radar basic locks faster, which is useful (even essential) thing for homing missiles.

4. That's a difficult question of game balance, so I cannot promise anything =)

5. This skill only increase effect of consumables, it doesn't not have an effect of auto-heal or something =)
Perhaps, we should describe it more clearly...

6. Okay, there's a legal way: you should join order, and there will be quests about alien systems (I'm not sure, but now it's available from level 35 or something like that).
But you can always find an opened alien system (there's always an alien system, which is opened - usually the closest one to starting system). When you destroy all alien hives in alien system, system considered liberated, and all adjacent systems opens for travel.

Thanks for your feedback again, I hope we will, with your and community help of course, create a great game, which we all will enjoy very much! =)

[Ophidios]

2. Conversation system - of course, all dialogs need editing. That's probably because we're not native english-speakers.
But we have good news - we've found an english-speaking editor, and, probably, very soon all dialogs will be much better =)

Well poo, I had already started putting together a mod with all English dialog corrected and clarified.  Guess I'll put that on the shelf, ha ha.

[Lurler]

Well poo, I had already started putting together a mod with all English dialog corrected and clarified.  Guess I'll put that on the shelf, ha ha.

Well, you can certainly release the mod, or at least send us your corrections when you are done.
Since we will be able to start rewriting dialogues only after 25 of May.

[Ophidios]

Roger that - I'll keep tinkering with it in my spare time, then.