Some Comments and Suggestions

[jenie]

First of all, great game! I had been looking for a game like this for a long time, and it really hit the spot. It'd definitely a lot of fun and I appreciate all the work the Trese Brothers have put into it! Now some criticisms and suggestions: 
 

• I have seen posts indicating that the developers intend include an in-battle surrender option, that's good because it really feels like something that's missing from the game. One of you commented that you were looking to make in-battle surrender worse than pre-battle surrender. In my opinion it should have the same results as a surrender due to morale or engine loss. From the point of view of the enemy, it's more or less the same if the ship stops fighting because the crew lost heart or because the captain did, and it's also the same if the engine gets shot out or if they shut it off themselves, no?
  
  
• On a similar vein, I think enemy captains should also be able to surrender as well when they feel defeat is certain, particularly if they're trying to escape and failing. There could even be class modifiers depending on enemy captain class, like Merchants and Explorers should be fairly willing to surrender, while Zealots and Xenos never surrender at all.
  
  
• Along that note, I don't like the way crew combat surrenders work. It's unintuitive and doesn't make any sense that every combatant takes a percentage chance to die depending on how much the enemy likes you. That's now how you'd expect it to work. People don't say, "Okay I accept your surrender, but I'm going to randomly execute two of you because I don't like you." Either they accept your fighting crew's surrender or they don't, and I think both reputation and the highest charisma score among the team should play a role in whether they're let go or executed. The situation where it would be a percentage chance is if you try disengage rather than lay down your arms, there I can seem some guys escaping while the others don't. On the note of which, there should be a way to try to disengage, sometimes I find that I'm in way over my head against Xeno and I really wish I could order my team to do a fighting retreat in the homes some of them will make it. 
  
  
• The health bar in ship combat needs is very coarse and lacking in gradations, in particular the last 10-20% of it never seems to drop. You could have a ship at like 50/1900 health and yet there's still quite a bit of bar left instead of just the tinyest of slivers. It could also be slightly larger. As it is now it's not a very useful indicator, and i find myself constantly look up to see what the real HP value is.
  
  
• There is way more variety of ship types available to purchase than there is variety of ship types flying around the space lanes. Like I am completely certain I have never encountered any of the following ships: Corsair Interceptor, Wolf Vector, Sword Cutter, Royale Gladius, Arcanum Freighter, Reach Cruiser, Tiberian Highligher, Horizon Highliner, Crimson Defender, Aegis Freighter, Degla Megalift. Also haven't encountered any carriers, but i assume you're holding those off until AI strikecraft are a thing. Also while i have encountered variants of the Lightbow Raptor and Solar Predator hulls, they are very rare. Same deal for the Aeternum Vindex, the Stellar Falcon, and their variants. It's sad because there is so much ship variety, and yet it feels like most of what i encounter are the same half-dozen ships.
  
  
• Ship naming schemes can be a bit confusing. For example the Lightbow Raptor, Bolt Raptor, and Longbow Cruiser are all variants of the same hull. However the Raptor Class is a different hull, and the Longbolt yet another hull. The Raptor class at least should be something like Lunar Predator, Stellar Predator, or Nebular Predator to make the naming scheme more consistent. Similarly there is both a Sword Cutter and a Sword Battlecruiser. You should probably rename the Battlecruiser to Longsword, which would fit well with the Broadsword. Also Rapier Cutter would be cooler than Sword Cutter, so consider that as well.

• As I was doing the Call of the Strong mission, a big deal was made about how the secret high value prisoner transport missions would be much more lucrative than standard prisoner transports, and let's just say that I found myself rather underwhelmed. Also according to the wiki you were supposed to be chased by two ships if you betrayed the assassin cult, but i only got one. Maybe it's because it took me a long time to offload the guy i rescued.

• When recruiting Vytautas, his contact panel on the starport screen doesn't vanish until you leave the starport, clicking on it again causes the game to crash. Also it would be nice if Vytautas started as just a Rank 1 Wing Commando with nothing else, the Soldier ranks he has are useful if you're going to make him a rifleman but they're deadweight if you want to make him a Pistoleer for that sweet knife and pistol build combo.

• The twin engine Sword Cutter (and presumably also the Wolf Vector, but haven't checked), only show a single engine plume in the jump screen.

• There need to be more ways to replace lost high level crew members. There's conscription to an extent, but you only ever seem to be able to conscript the most basic types of crewmen. You can't get any of the cool specialists. There should be some very high level crew running around though. Captain die in battle, or are captured by their enemies, or sometimes just retire from the life; and of course crew members desert when they lose faith in their captain. What's more such people by virtue of their experience are liable to have some connections among the gravs, so it would make sense and be nice if there was some way - expensive in terms of rep and/or money - to reach out to them and tell them there's space aboard. As it is right now, while i can replace a high level Navigator or Gunner by Conscripting, it's basically hopeless if I lose a high end Merchant or Scavenger.

• Speaking of conscription, it would be nice if enemy crews could have some kind of death save so that if I'm trying to knock out the ship via boarding, I don't wind up murdering all the pickings. There should be a category for enemy crews that are out of the fight and count as dead, but not actually dead and so can be conscripted. This should apply to any enemy crew that make their death saves, as well as any that surrender from that one talent.

• In the ship combat victory screen, the talents seem to shuffle in order every time you click on them. This can be a problem if you have Orchestrated Salvage but don't want to use it, it's very easy for me to be clicking repeatedly on the various recovery talents and suddenly Orchestrated Salvage shuffles itself under my pointer and gets clicked on accidentally.

• Often times the retreat option tells me that the other captain will disparage my reputation with their faction, but if I pick it there's no reputation loss. Presumably either there should be reputation loss, or in those instances the retreat option should be the one that doesn't say you will be reported. 
  
  
  
  
• Compression artefacts are visible in the map backgrounds, especially rmap_galaxy_1, while i understand that there's limitations for the mobile versions of the game, it would be great if the PC version could have higher resolution space boxes.

[jenie]

Some more things I thought of!



The symbol for High Tech Industrial looks too similar to Industrial because they both prominently feature an I in their icon, and it's hard to tell them apart when zoomed out. High Tech is a distinct type of zone with its own supply and demand, so they're not interchangeable. Instead of the symbol being ^htI it would be better if it was something like HT or Hi.
 
The flags for Cadar and Alta Mesa can be pretty hard to tell apart, more than once I've gone to the planet of one faction thinking it was the other. Both of the flags seem to be two tone backgrounds, if the Cadar flag used the darker tone throughout and maybe made it a bit more purple that would help a lot in making the two distinct.


One thing I've noticed when losing faction status due to rep loss is that high Military Rank seems to go first. Don't know if this is intentional, but it would be nice if it were, I like the idea of using high military rank to shield my Rank 4 Trader's Permits (and also level 5-8 Edicts).



Though on the note of that, the way that losing a measly 3 Reputation can cost you a high rank, permit, or edict feels a little weird when you have a reputation in the hundreds. Like when you have 400 Rep with someone you'd expect swings that small just to happen from opinion entropy. Such a thing is a tiny rounding error, so it feels a bit strange they'd strip me for it of a title for it. On the other had, i guess i'd be bad if having huge reps let you get away with damn near anything.

Also on the same vein, it seems the during ship combat the check for whether you lose a title happens before you do Magnanimous Victory. So on occassion i've had defeated a ship in combat, been stripped of a title, then used Magnanimous Victory to drop the rep loss down to 1. If Magnanimous Victory drops you rep loss below 3 then you shouldn't lose a high title, right?

It would be nice if you could buy introductions for contacts you've already met. It's annoying if you're buttering up a contact in the hopes of getting a really good introduction and then suddenly the contact you were hoping to be introduced to suddenly pops up in your contacts list. Don't know if the game keeps track of whether you have met contacts in your list or not. If it does, then there's no reason why you couldn't still be introduced before meeting them. However even if it doesn't, a mutual friend putting in the good word for you would still make sense for earning you personal reputation with someone.

It would also be appreciated if we could get some search options for contacts. Like just recently I was looking for Bounty Hunters and it's a bit tedious to go through every single contact that offers recruits in search of Bounty Hunters. As my luck had it, my first choice actually vanished on the way there, so i had to go to search again to find a second choice. It's rather tedious.

The Red Badge talent seems to activate in Disputed Judgement missions. Shouldn't those, on account of being negotiation related, use Adept Mediation instead?

[unback]

There need to be more ways to replace lost high level crew members. There's conscription to an extent, but you only ever seem to be able to conscript the most basic types of crewmen. You can't get any of the cool specialists. There should be some very high level crew running around though. Captain die in battle, or are captured by their enemies, or sometimes just retire from the life; and of course crew members desert when they lose faith in their captain. What's more such people by virtue of their experience are liable to have some connections among the gravs, so it would make sense and be nice if there was some way - expensive in terms of rep and/or money - to reach out to them and tell them there's space aboard. As it is right now, while i can replace a high level Navigator or Gunner by Conscripting, it's basically hopeless if I lose a high end Merchant or Scavenger.

well this. at first i was kina angry and anooyed that its basicly impossible to replace contact only specialists (try loosing engineer or explorer in my recent games... i know all contacts in game and only one offers enginers but have constant -10inf and dont buy intel... :F) but then, after some thought, it make sense in a way - those of not basic 'starport' recruitable crew classes require contacts to recruit at all, and max lvl you can get from contact is 15 (8 from erep, 2 talent scout, 2 merceneries, 2 from trade/military rank and 1 from m.rank above 13), which is considered quite high level for a crew member. ofcourse this requires very specific situation but still, getting recruits on lv 10 aint that hard, and even if you run 18crew 3 officers ship thier level wont matter as much, - most important talents are around rank5, - and ship pools vs needed talents can be managed by crew composition AND ofcourse getting those super-high lv basic-classes from defeated ships.

Ship naming schemes can be a bit confusing. For example the Lightbow Raptor, Bolt Raptor, and Longbow Cruiser are all variants of the same hull. However the Raptor Class is a different hull, and the Longbolt yet another hull. The Raptor class at least should be something like Lunar Predator, Stellar Predator, or Nebular Predator to make the naming scheme more consistent. Similarly there is both a Sword Cutter and a Sword Battlecruiser. You should probably rename the Battlecruiser to Longsword, which would fit well with the Broadsword. Also Rapier Cutter would be cooler than Sword Cutter, so consider that as well.

Maybe the first part is the archaic name of guy who desinged it in frist place, and second part is the ship designed class/role. Longbolt seems to be new design so probably old ways naming patterns didnt apply.

As I was doing the Call of the Strong mission, a big deal was made about how the secret high value prisoner transport missions would be much more lucrative than standard prisoner transports,
im pretty sure 100k is huge amount of money lorewise. its almost as much as fully operational starship costs (!!).  the fact that you can have tons and tons of credits made super easy and cheap ways is IMO gameplay sweetener so we dont lose our hair while trying to save up for that bridge4.

I don't like the way crew combat surrenders work.

Yea. Morale and surrender things might be incoming soon. I hope.

Often times the retreat option tells me that the other captain will disparage my reputation with their faction, but if I pick it there's no reputation loss.

and sometimes you do loose reputation because retreating from your_faction ship meet while patroling said faction holdings while having rep with them above 300. My take meet cap just dont like your cap personally so he did send some shitty raport about your cap, while in situation you descripbed they did not care enoigh to even consider bothering reporting you.

Though on the note of that, the way that losing a measly 3 Reputation can cost you a high rank, permit, or edict

When in spotlight even smallest stains are visible . but yea i agree, having over 3k rep and still loosing ranks because your faction suddenly got involved in some war while you were happily spying counterspying and game did choose that you cap would take enemy side in the conflict.. :]

It would also be appreciated if we could get some search options for contacts.

there kinda is, if you filter contacts by type and then just scroll till contacts that offer wanted job by default. but i agree, filter by recruting option (or even class groups hunters, military, techs etc) would be super usefull.

[tarquelne]

Conscrption: I really like how we need to “earn” the special occupations from Contacts, but it does strike me as unpleasantly weird that we never see those guys in surviving ship crews.

(I’d be happier if it was explicitly against the law to conscript certain professions.)

Maybe add a level 15 QM talent to sometimes - rarely - see and thus potentially grab one of the currently Contact-only occupations?
Could give it a long cool down time, and even require a credit outlay and restrict it to Conflicts, like the Prize talents.



Event idea - more likely to occur the more you Destroy enemy ships after they surrender.

Imposter
Conscripted crew member lied about thier level and/or occupation. They come aboard with a hidden Trait making them likely to jump ship, and giving either a penalty to all thier skills, and/or thier auto-saves don’t function. 

[unback]

they never appear on "conscript" lists because they never appear on auto-genereted crew list. make few new captains with various ship picks and see what crew you get at start - those are the crews you gona meet and fight, and eventually would want to recruit. you can see some m.off, enginer or doctor officers but never crew. and obviously officers aint valid to press gang.

[fallen]

Jun 23, 2019 11:39:55 GMT -5 unback said:

they never appear on "conscript" lists because they never appear on auto-genereted crew list. make few new captains with various ship picks and see what crew you get at start - those are the crews you gona meet and fight, and eventually would want to recruit. you can see some m.off, enginer or doctor officers but never crew. and obviously officers aint valid to press gang.

Also, you can never conscript officers.

[tarquelne]

Re, auto generated crew lists:



Of course. What I’m proposing, though, is that no matter how many of the specialists are *really* in other ships crews (I don’t believe that the player is the only one who’s figured out that’s a good idea.) we see them only rarely. To keep Contacts as the main way to get the specialists.

[fallen]

jenie - improved the prices offered at the end of Call of the Strong.

Sorry to hear you got a crash during that story arc, we'll try to reproduce and fix.

Vytautus is a character hand designed by one of our KickStarter backers. The Wing Commando and Soldier Jobs are part of his background and won't be changed.

[unback]

Jun 23, 2019 14:10:30 GMT -5 fallen said:

Jun 23, 2019 11:39:55 GMT -5 unback said:

and obviously officers aint valid to press gang.

Also, you can never conscript officers.

[jenie]

Jun 23, 2019 14:16:38 GMT -5 fallen said:

jenie - improved the prices offered at the end of Call of the Strong.

Cool thanks!

Vytautus is a character hand designed by one of our KickStarter backers. The Wing Commando and Soldier Jobs are part of his background and won't be changed.

Oh! Okay yeah if someone else designed him then definitely don't change him.