- Scale cargo missions to size of ship. A mission to take 2 cargo somewhere is completely useless when you have 200+ cargo slots. Scaling can either be larger missions or simply setting a per ton price. The goal here is to give people a reason to not just grind their favorite trade route over and over again.
- Long range missions - maybe something like multiple pickup/delivery "trade routes". For example a mission requires you to take 10 X to a planet and then pick up 10 Y there and deliver it to the next planet and so on. The more stops the more profit, etc. These will encourage players to move about and explore. These can also be one-way or return you to where you started.
- Store prices from visited planets and have some sort of interface in the trade window to use that information. This simply saves us the trouble of taking screen shots or writing it all down. A good example would be when you get details on a commodity you can get a list of last known prices. You can add ship and upgrade information as well. Store the data locally if data storage is an issue.
- Prices almost never change. I've literally taken screen shots of prices and a week or so later they are exactly the same. In the original Elite I felt the price changes were way too drastic but it least it forced you to constantly try new routes. Although, to be fair, I don't know how you make this work in a MMO world. Maybe change prices on daily basis or something.
- In solo mode pirates are almost non-existent and completely pointless. In a couple of weeks I've had maybe 10 total attacks. The first two I tried to fight them but you hit them a couple of times and they just run away. Later I had an poorly armed hauler so I simply avoided the attacks either via the escape vector or by simply jumping away. I haven't upgraded a single weapon or defense system on any ship I owned, there is simply no point. In fact I down graded shields on one simply to get more cargo space. Obviously I could go look for trouble and find it but it seems like there should be a little more action in the day to day space trucking. Note I don't want you to go overboard here and have attacks every jump or anything (yes, I know. Don't play solo. But that doesn't fix solo does it?)
- More warnings - like a warning that you don't have docking permission when you get near a station. And warning you have no cargo when launching (nothing like 10 minutes of flying to realize you forgot to buy cargo)
- A single key click to request docking permission. Why oh why does something used so much take so many clicks?
- Automatically turn from sun when jumping in. This can be interrupted if the player takes control. As it is the requirement to turn on your own seems to be purely to make sure the player is paying attention.
- Remove space requirement for docking computer. Heck, just make it standard equipment on everything but a sidewinder. Let's face it, the only purpose it serves is to allow you to run out of the room while it docks for you. Otherwise I can dock 10 times faster on my own.
- Long range missions - maybe something like multiple pickup/delivery "trade routes". For example a mission requires you to take 10 X to a planet and then pick up 10 Y there and deliver it to the next planet and so on. The more stops the more profit, etc. These will encourage players to move about and explore. These can also be one-way or return you to where you started.
- Store prices from visited planets and have some sort of interface in the trade window to use that information. This simply saves us the trouble of taking screen shots or writing it all down. A good example would be when you get details on a commodity you can get a list of last known prices. You can add ship and upgrade information as well. Store the data locally if data storage is an issue.
- Prices almost never change. I've literally taken screen shots of prices and a week or so later they are exactly the same. In the original Elite I felt the price changes were way too drastic but it least it forced you to constantly try new routes. Although, to be fair, I don't know how you make this work in a MMO world. Maybe change prices on daily basis or something.
- In solo mode pirates are almost non-existent and completely pointless. In a couple of weeks I've had maybe 10 total attacks. The first two I tried to fight them but you hit them a couple of times and they just run away. Later I had an poorly armed hauler so I simply avoided the attacks either via the escape vector or by simply jumping away. I haven't upgraded a single weapon or defense system on any ship I owned, there is simply no point. In fact I down graded shields on one simply to get more cargo space. Obviously I could go look for trouble and find it but it seems like there should be a little more action in the day to day space trucking. Note I don't want you to go overboard here and have attacks every jump or anything (yes, I know. Don't play solo. But that doesn't fix solo does it?)
- More warnings - like a warning that you don't have docking permission when you get near a station. And warning you have no cargo when launching (nothing like 10 minutes of flying to realize you forgot to buy cargo)
- A single key click to request docking permission. Why oh why does something used so much take so many clicks?
- Automatically turn from sun when jumping in. This can be interrupted if the player takes control. As it is the requirement to turn on your own seems to be purely to make sure the player is paying attention.
- Remove space requirement for docking computer. Heck, just make it standard equipment on everything but a sidewinder. Let's face it, the only purpose it serves is to allow you to run out of the room while it docks for you. Otherwise I can dock 10 times faster on my own.