Great start, terrific end, horrible middle

[Annex]

The games start is perfect. The tutorial is very well done and explains how to play the game in very short order. The end of the game is also perfect with just enough cool stuff (including the music) and challenge. However everything in the middle is absolutely horrible. There are only a handful of custom made missions, the rest are generic "go kill something" or "bring me 150 ore". The size of the galaxy seems to be irrelevant as you can level up in just a handful of systems. There is no need to explore for new tech as its all available to you at your factions capital system. The other factions seem to play zero part in the game as their ships dont appear to enter your factions systems or involve the player in any shape or form. The game has a nice variety of ships but if you like beam weapons for example you have only one choice at each ship tier (at least I wasnt able to ever find alternatives). So with that said:

- need a lot more mission variety including mission sources (how about missions offered from nearby merchant ships?)
- need more variety in ships, perhaps not whole new models/designs but how about universal weapon slots so you can customize a desired ship?
- there needs to be involvement in other factions. At least allow us to join more than one faction
- there needs to be more to do. How about exploration tasks/missions? Build new stations? Claim territory for your faction? Deploy static defenses?

[FlessenGreendart]

Just throwing this out there: You can join other factions, just ask around. Joining Freedom is straightforward enough, but if you want to join the Fanatics, you have to dig a little deeper.

If you think you need more variety of ships, take a look at the available mods (more will likely become available when the game gets released).

I have to admit, I'd like to see features from your last point integrated into the game, especially expanding your factions territory.

[Annex]

What I meant was that you cant join more than one faction at a time. Once youve joined a faction the purpose of the other factions is what? They dont participate in the conflict, or have their ships traverse into your factions space etc.

[Hammish]

I know some of these are already in BTC as well (though I haven't been around as much as of late, waiting for full release at this point).  While there aren't omni slots I got around that by making different variants of the ships with different hardpoint configurations to tailor to personal desire (like gunships rigged for ballistic or energy, your choice, with the strengths and drawbacks to each.)

There's also at least a -slight- bit more endgame in the fact that if you want the best Experimental stuff you have to go hunting for fairly rare larger ships in high-security space.  Take them down and you'll earn data core fragments as possible loot rewards, which are then used to upgrade existing gear.  The experimental gear isn't just higher-tuned regular stuff either; all of them have unique characteristics.  (Hulls have better flight performance or unique bonuses compared to regular, and there is an entire subset of experimental weapons: energy torpedoes, tri-focus beams, ballistics that can track locked targets, gauss rifles, MIRV missiles that split and even semi-autonomous combat drones with their own railguns and missiles.)