A great big list of Suggestions, Ideas & Balance Tweaks

[MattyK]

So, initially, I had this great big document of ideas I started writing out about ten hours into playing VoidExpanse, but thought... "I'm no developer, this looks really pretentious and a bit too critical, after all, you guys do take feedback seriously." (But if you'd like to sit down and read that too with a pinch of salt, I decided to put it up Here (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23891276/Void%20Expanse%20Ideas%20Suggestions%20Critique.txt), though be warned it was done in BBCode Formatting)

So I decided to sit down and make something simple, honest a bit politer and more concise.

But firstly, I'd just like to thank you guys, the Devs, the level of feedback and community input on this game is astounding.



Combat

• Most activity in the system seems to consist mostly of pirates with maybe one or two miners or traders (3-4 in higher strength systems), suggest more civilian and trader ships roaming around (be it going from jump-gate to jump-gate) and a slightly higher patrol concentration in higher strength systems.
• At the moment, the most common AI behavior is Ramming. Everything from little itty bitty Civilian Shuttles to big nasty Hammers seems set on ramming you. AI behaviour could do with some tweaking, make combat less head-on, more keep at optimal weapon distance and aim for your flanks.
• In a game that is already so complex in terms of movement, hardpoints and turret convergence, Turret Tracking based on the target locked would not only make the game much easier to pick up, but also allow for much easier hit and runs and more fluid (and fun!) fighting.
• Destroying Pirate Dens is both tedious and unrewarding in terms of both gameplay and simulation. Suggest decreased spawn rates or a set amount (30-40% of the current maximum pirate forces) flees the system through the nearest jump-gate following one of their destructions. Also give Dens a custom marker on the map.
• Playing without radar can be confusing and also tedious, suggest radar still functions but all contacts on it show up as 'white' and an animated static effect over the radar screen (along with the radar's range and off-screen lock-on being reduced dramatically).
• The ability to control the 'cycles' of beam weapons. Able to cut them prematurely at a loss of damage (but also allowing complete fire control), basically it means you don't 'accidentally' hit other ships (notably friendlies!) in close proximity so often just because your Disruptor Ray was still firing.
• Improved Wingman/Friendlies AI. You have no idea how many times I've been rammed up the tailpipe and shot by my stupid wingmen! It'd be easy to fix if they just followed behind me but to the left or right a tad.

Progression

• Cargo size seems to be something of an afterthought on a lot of ships, starting with a default 100 cargo, particularly frustrating for stuff like cruisers, where the Yamato has a meager default setting. Give more diverse and generous cargo limits to more ships?
• Equipment progression seems pretty linear, with the only hard limits being your fuel consumption and weapon mounts, effectively allowing you to fit a Civilian Shuttle with the highest end thrusters, shields and RCS. Perhaps limiting Generator and Fuel Tank sizes on ship class?
• Social and Industry skill pages are both so small they could effectively be rolled into one tab, clearing the way for more skills.
• Both mining and trading seems to require specific skills before they can become even acceptable experience-earners for those that don't start with such specializations, forcing them to go into combat to skill into them first, perhaps make both a little easier to acquire?
• Revamp the Piloting tree to be more like the Laser weapons tree when it comes to leveling into a new ship class, requiring the player to have at least a handful of pilot skills per ship class.
• Branched "Industrial" Ship progression for miners & traders (Light Frigate, Heavy Frigate, Industrial Ship, Heavy Industrial Ship) at a slightly cheaper amount of skill points and level requirement.
• Progression in almost any faction basically requires a degree of combat (Even moreso with the Order), use system entrenchment/advancement mechanics (suggested in Simulation) to push out territory to an expansion phase where it will attempt to 'annex' the system (and then by further supplying materials, or possibly even hiring pilots or mercenaries of your own, fuel the ongoing struggle either directly or indirectly)

Simulation (Local/System & Galaxy)

• Territory & Expansion Systems (Hostile Aliens invade, human races expand across neutral space, neutral space expands across uncolonized space, pirates infest uncolonized & neutral space in varying intensity)
• Entrenchment/Advancement mechanics for individual system infrastructure & industries (I.E. A Trader may be able to supply construction materials and military-grade technology to a system to increase its strength, or minerals, goods and luxuries to increase its infrastructure)
• More diversity in orbital structures, I.E. Solar Farms, food farms, refineries, factories.
• Pirate structure & hierarchy, will no longer mindlessly orbit the system or sit in one pre-defined location, instead they will congregate around dens and fly out from them in small raiding parties, hide in debris fields or attempt attack space-lanes between gates or stations, or gang up on asteroid miners. Will also scale to only be 1.5 in number of ships in the system (So no more 40+ pirates in a single system with a barely functioning science outpost, but might respawn every few minutes depending on system strength or number of active 'Dens')

Greebles
From Wikipedia; A greeble or nurnie is a fine detailing added to the surface of a larger object that makes it appear more complex, and therefore more visually interesting. It usually gives the audience an impression of increased scale.

• A 3D Docking Bay 'Overview' screen showing the current ship model used docked, giving both an idea of scale, and perhaps interacting with the simulation outside if say... A ship in the system docks with the station.
• A dedicated Lore Database showing unbiased information of history learned through conversation.
• A visually improved and more streamlined/relevant conversation window without all the same generic side-column dialog.
• More Character Portrait Customization Options
• More Music (Ambient, Combat & Docked)

But most of all, keep up the good work! ^^;

[Silberspeer]

Wow, this was a good reading  Actually I like most of the ideas you brought here there and I agree with them. For me it feels like you were strongly influenced by X-series and it is actually cool. Especially I liked a Simulation part because simulations in games are my favorite subject. Some of the ideas are almost the same with those we wanted to implement to the game in the future. Actually we are keeping a list of the most worthy ideas and I'd say that almost everything from your post goes there This is a list of possible changes and improvements and we hope that once we'll be able to do everything from the list. However, right now we are not planning such a major changes because we are busy with some other things. We are keeping supporting this game, of course, and probably in the future we will seriously upgrade VoidExpanse using our own ideas and the players suggestions as well.

[p0ki]

Hy MattyK, I would like to ask you something for the pirates:

...
Pirate structure & hierarchy, will no longer mindlessly orbit the system or sit in one pre-defined location, instead they will congregate around dens and fly out from them in small raiding parties, hide in debris fields or attempt attack space-lanes between gates or stations, or gang up on asteroid miners. Will also scale to only be 1.5 in number of ships in the system (So no more 40+ pirates in a single system with a barely functioning science outpost, but might respawn every few minutes depending on system strength or number of active 'Dens')
...

Do you mean that pirates should fly in groups through one system or the whole galaxy?
Because right now Pirates can't go from one system to another, it just looks like they could.

That would be something I would like to see, pirates spawning in the headquater and starting from there. That way you could really "clean" a system when you watch the gates.

[MattyK]

Heh, thanks Silberspeer. I'm happy to entertain and brain-storm. ^^

Hy MattyK, I would like to ask you something for the pirates:Do you mean that pirates should fly in groups through one system or the whole galaxy?
Because right now Pirates can't go from one system to another, it just looks like they could.

That would be something I would like to see, pirates spawning in the headquater and starting from there. That way you could really "clean" a system when you watch the gates.

Well it was originally pitched to just be a local thing (Pirates would group at a randomly-spawned den in system and go out from there) but your suggestion sounds like it could be a lot of fun too! Maybe even introduce things like hidden pirate-operated jump-gates that don't show up on map that they could 'leak into' certain 'high security' systems through.

Another idea was... Taking a leaf from the Cloaking thread (http://forums.atomictorch.com/index.php?topic=793.0). I had a rather ingenious thought on it, why not make Cloaks go in the shields slot? So you chose between shielding and a bit of armor tanking, or having the comfort of choosing your engagements. I mean as it stands, players can already pick their engagements and difficulty with relative impunity based on the difficulty level of the system...

...There could also be various penalties (speed while cruising, your systems use up X amount more power depending on the cloak's rating) and ofcourse, when you get hit, instead of decloaking, you slowly become more and more visible based on damage to your ship and it takes a bit of time or disengaging from combat to regain your cloaking. After say, 25%, you're targeted as the same rate as everyone else, but the lock-on time changes exponentially the higher your cloak percentage (to the point of 90% and above being untargetable and current locks are lost)

Another way to look at it would be to increase damage mitigation while 'cloaked' too.