I was in my overpedantic nerd mode when posting, but yes.
While the flight in the deep space can be considered boring (but huge expanses of nothingness are crucial to make it feel like space and boredom itself is easily averted with time compression), when there are some sights, they rarely need beautification - in our own solar system are protuberances - elaborate arches of plasma rising many Earth diameters from it's surface, humongous gas giants with colourful storms larger than the Earth, one world covered in volcanoes just like the face of a teen can be covered with severe acne, frozen world with nitrogen geysers, a volcano rising 26km into Mars' atmosphere, a world that's basically a maze of ice canyons and so on.
More so, attempts at beautification usually fail horribly by trying too look more real than the real thing - colourful trails, specular on every surface, planar shockwaves and so on.
I'd even go as far as to make an optional "hardcore audiovisuals" flag that would disable external sounds and laser beams rendering in space. It's one boolean variable and a single additional check, so I don't see why it wouldn't be made.
Vapour trails looks good, sun surfing is fun. These are just two examples of why they should be in game. Oh hold on a minute, it IS a game, and that's my point. Who cares if it's not how things should be?
I'm not against some condensation on ship's pointy bits and shockwaves. But as for being not how things should be - I think that many do. In Frontier you got to play space pirates in more or less real universe - it doesn't get much cooler than that and the realism only amplified the fun, because the most restrictive pieces of realism were overridden by in-game powerful, but not outrageously implausible technology.
If you don't agree that realism is far more effective at amplifying drama, than tutti-frutti GFX, watch Space odyssey 2001/2010 and post here again.
As for sun-skimming - it was a risky way of obtaining hydrogen from stars, which are largely made of, you know, hydrogen, so if you had sufficiently shielded craft, I'm all for it.
For a start we don't know how things are going to develop so i'd go with similar gameplay to FFE but crank up the gfx to reflect modern technology.
A reasonable suggestion, though I'd alter a few things:
-more variety in hardware and weapons (mass drivers for long range hitting power, etc).
-HUD zoom function
-functional crews
-more hardpoints
-more and more varied man-made structures (surface, atmospheric, orbital and Lagrangian ones)
-more lively systems
-more mission variety
-hyperdrive addon allowing for targetting individual stellar masses in system as jump reference points (Proxima F****** centauri)
-@#%^$#^$! proximity alerts, exiting stardreamer milliseconds before getting vaporized by an LPA was possible to overcome with practice but an instant n00b killer.
If you make it too difficult it will turn players away.
Complex doesn't equal difficult and simple doesn't equal easy.
On the other hand, going from complex to simple equals dumbing down, equals boring, equals not fun.
Add some tutorial, optional flight and combat assist hardware (that veteran players will sell immediately for fun and profit) preinstalled on starting craft, and make default starting point(s) somewhere else than Phekda and it's going to be fine.
