Some suggestions on V1.4

[Slide]

Hey Everyone,

Put about 15 hours into 1.4. Got some suggestions that should be easy to implement and some things that need balancing. Love to hear feedback on my suggestions. Love the game, big fan.

So to start off, some things that need balancing:

#1 Trading: Very broken.

-In system trading needs to be mega nerfed. In any system with 2 or more stations you can very easily just go back and forth between them and make a fortune on resources. Trading needs to be changed so that in-system trading is far less lucrative. It is WAY too safe for how much money and XP it generates. Reduce $$$, reduce XP and add a multiplier for distance travelled or gates taken so that in order to really make a fortune with trading you actually need to put some risk into it.

-Polymers need a nerf. The swing in price is too great for how many you can buy. Either the quantities need to be reduced or the selling price needs to be raised. Too easy to get rich off this resource.

-There seems to be a bug where resources will be priced at 1D. Ive seen it happen with Food. Seen other people report it happening with much more expensive resources.


#2 Mining: Very Underwhelming

-The real way to make money with mining is to spec in the social tree due to the increased selling prices and reduction in fuel costs (and repairs somewhat) which is very counter intuitive. There should be an industrial skill that increases the $$$ you get from selling resources (Maybe the more you sell at once the more you get per, to reward large cargo holds?Call it Industrial Complex Contacts). The skills for speeding up and increasing range on mining are pointless and should be replaced with ore refining (more $ for mined resources) and ore compacting (ore requires less cargo space.....if its possible to code this, or an increase cargo space skill in this tree).

-Mining is pretty boring. Nothing to do about that really unless you make it into a mini game. You could at least make mining devices toggle on/off. Obviously sitting there watching the screen isnt great gameplay but clicking my buttons every 5 seconds to keep the mining up isnt adding anything to the experience, its just obnoxious. If it was a toggle I could at least look at other stuff while my energy drains.

#3: Combat: Hard to tell

-Hard to tell due to trading being broken and the combat difficulty/tech nature of the systems. Most games its an easy hop to a low combat high tech system (5 combat, 60 tech?  no danger, buy almost anything you want. And you can get to it at the very beginning easily in most cases) and easily get WAY ahead of the curve, completely removing most danger from the game. It shouldnt be possible to get all the best equipment from a single system with absolutely no risk involved. Station equipment randomizing is partially to blame, but so is the combat/tech level mechanic of star systems. All of this leads to "Ill just stay in this system till I have everything". This mechanic needs a revamp.


On to some suggestions I have for ways to fix the above and otherwise improve the game:

-As mentioned above there should be some sort of distance mechanic involved in trading. Some sort of unique resources that are very lucrative to take long distances. Some sort of commodity market you can access at stations that shows you what commodities are in high demand in what systems and where they are readily available. Really anything that makes it lucrative to take cargos long distances or to more dangerous areas (and not on a whim).

-Pricing within systems need to be normalized. You should certainly be able to run some in system trading and make a profit but it should always be less lucrative to do this then mining or pirating/pirate hunting. The real scores in trading are in taking cargos long distances or to dangerous places.

-As mentioned earlier the mining skill tree really needs some work. Someone specing into mining should have small boosts to cargo space, selling ores. The process should be made less obnoxious by turning the mining laser into a toggle on/off. Maybe a special skill that makes all the ore you have in station storage (and only ore) available to you at every station. Call it Basic Material Teleporter. This would make it easier to get more for your ores you mine.

-Traders need a money sink. Something to do with all that cash.  Sure grabbing whatever ship you want and equipping it with the best of everything is great, but what then? Why trade? Why is the Traders mid-end game the exact same as everyone else? They need something to do. Buy stations (and staff them, supply them and benefit from their economic endeavours). Construct new stations. Construct new warp gates. Fund mining expeditions. Fund pirate hunting groups/hire mercenaries. Fund factions to create more patrols. Fund faction patrols to neutral territories. There are a lot of things that can be done. We need something here. The goal of the trader shouldnt be "ditch my trading ship for the most kitted out warmachine you can get".


-Ship Diversity:

I dont think anyone would debate more is good here. My idea, which is hopefully easy to implement involves 2 things:

Please do not lock weapon mounts to a certain weapon type. Size locked is fine, but please let us add whatever weapons we want. This alone adds immensely to ship diversity. Hull Identity should be based on how many and how big its weapons are, how many boosters/devices/consumable slots it has and most importantly:

Each ship variant should have its own unique un-removable booster. This will give infinite permutations to each hull type dependant on the imagination of, well, you the devs, and modders. Not only could these be stronger/differently tuned versions of boosters already in the game, they could add unique abilities like strafe warping or mine ammo generation or any number of things. Obviously the enhanced/different versions of the boosters we already have would be easier and most likely completely feasible to code but if a way to add unique special abilities  to hard point boosters were added to the game and if modders were given a lot of leeway on what that booster can be set to do, wed have a veritable infinite supply of new, unique hull variants and more importantly compelling reasons to not always fly the biggest most weapon covered ship we can get our hands on. Small and medium size ships with cool unique abilities like strafe warping or auto anti missile flares or EMP immunity or shield restore every x minutes upon going below X shields would add reasons to fly these ships and interesting gameplay. It also adds flavor for multiplayer, I mean, were all flying the same 2 or 3 ships and thats boring.

-Hacking:

While the concept is good, implementation is terrible. Maybe I just dont understand it but it seems completely luck based. No way to influence whether the links connect or not. May as well just set these to a specific number of powers cells to force the hack and have the skills reduce the amount of cells used. Same amount of gameplay in the end. Even better, and Id imagine more what youre going for, would be puzzles. There are tons of examples of decent to good hacking puzzles in other games and to be perfectly honest there is no shame and youd probably be best served by copying 4 or 5 (or more, the type of hacking min igame , obviously, not a complete copy) of them and add them to the game. Stations get a random type of hacking puzzle. Cores can be used to reset the puzzle or re-roll to a different puzzle for a higher cost.

Have many other thoughts but these are the major ones I think can best lead to improvement in the game. Would love to hear what the devs think about this. Im sure you guys have things in the work for all of this and maybe, just maybe, some of my ideas can improve what youve got coming. Really interested in hearing what my fellow players think of these changes as well.

Cheers,
Slide

[Silberspeer]

Ohhh, that was really a lot of reading - but, you know, pleasant reading. I didn't agree so much with a commentator or suggestion-bringer for a long time already. And some of your ideas are good enough for VoidExpanse 2. 

First, I would like to say some words on the subjects where I have a different opinion. Price depending on route length or absolute distance - nah, this is too shallow and obvious. Some more sophisticated mechanics of demand and satiation would work better.
Also about unlocking the weapon mounts types. I disagree with that because I think that at the very end everybody will try to buy only one ship with a best overall set of stats and that will affect the aims and goals of players, no, no good at all.

About balance issues - well, we will fix them and bring them to more satisfying form. And we will start with some trade re-balancing, it happens in one of the nearest patches.