I love this game. That said I find myself loving it in spite of a lot of glaring flaws, shortcomings, balance issues, and missing content. As I've been playing a kind of list of things that could be done to fix and improve ED has been forming in my mind. I hope there's some small chance this reaches Frontier, but if not oh well. Here it is:
Exploration
1. Increase credit payouts for habitable planet data by 1000%.
2. Increase credit payouts for terraform candidate planet data by 500%.
3. Increase credit payouts for metal rich planet and metal rich planetary ring data by 200%.
4. Add system survey missions.
5. Implement level 2 and 3 scanning with significant associated benefits.
Mining
1. Add tractor beam or something similar to weapon options to allow for efficient ore gathering. This over a thousand years in the future and all miners have is a manual cargo scoop?
2. Add asteroid scanner.
3. Add mining missions (seperate from metal/mineral delivery missions).
Combat
1. Improve AI of higher level enemies (low level chumps should suck, so they're currently mostly fine).
2. Improve NPC teamwork to move away from the endless 1v1 situations. The few times I've actually had multiple enemies attack me at once has been both thrilling and sort of scary.
3. Make assassination missions not always be a 1v1 fight with a large vessel. Three Eagles or two Cobras (or whatever) would be a nice change of pace.
4. Add higher level combat missions that can only be accessed with high rep/rank where high end combat ships are actually needed. Every combat encounter can be beaten by a Viper or a Cobra right now.
5. Add scaling credit payouts to conflict zones.
6. Make conflict zones have some kind of randomized victory/defeat condition rather than simply being static shooting galleries. When the victory/defeat condition is met have the conflict zone despawn and have a new one spawn somewhere else in the system. Also have this more directly affect civil war outcomes.
7. Add escort/guard missions for miners and traders.
8. Add station attack and defense missions where a station must be defended from a sizable attack force or conquered by the attacking faction. Attackers would need to destroy all defenders and external station weaponry, while defenders would simply need to destroy or force all attackers to flee.
Trading
1. Add trading computer module that would save a certain number of visited stations' market data, and would allow side by side comparisons of prices.
2. Introduce dynamic market fluctuations to represent NPC trading (pretty sure a real simulation of NPC trading isn't possible due to having no dedicated server).
3. Introduce longer distance established trade routes. Stations that produce certain commdities should always have some kind of outlet for them. Otherwise why are they producing them? Two or three jumps is not that bad for a trader (even if real humans don't want to do it).
4. Re-design SL traders to buy more things and to not buy anything that can be purchased in the same system they are in, and replace the Type 9s with a massive NPC freighter with docking capacity (with luxury market as the only service).
5. Add higher level trading missions that require huge amounts of cargo space and pay out 100k credits or more.
Miscelaneous Mission Stuff
1. Improve mission income in general and add higher tier rep dependent missions that pay quite well. Missions cease to be relevant past a certain point presently because their payouts don't scale very well.
2. Add recovery salvage missions meant to recover lost goods for the rightful owner. Such goods would not be considered stolen when picked up (unless mission is abandoned).
System Signal Sources
1. Remove mission alternative givers, and replace them with remote communications. Also make them less common than 100% with certain mission types.
2. Make traders actual traders who will buy and sell non-rare, non-illegal commodities, and fix the flight AI of the Type 6s (are they drunk?).
3. Make pirate encounters more interesting and varied. Right now they are pretty much all identical with only slight variation.
4. Add short-lived distress signals (semi-rare) where you can save a ship or ships under attack from various numbers and types of pirates. On top of bounties receive a credit reward if successful.
5. Add chance of pirates, authority, or both arriving at salvage sites.
6. Increase the upper limit of salvageable goods at salvage sites by 3-4x.
Ships
1. Release a lot more ships in the sub-2 million credit price range.
2. Release more Imperial and Alliance ships and transition their security forces towards using those ships rather than the Federation-based ships.
Stations
1. Release Imperial and Alliance-specific stations. They wouldn't necessarily need to be that different. Just enough to feel like they are distinct to that faction. Maybe have independents use the station type of whichever major faction is most prevalent in their area.
2. Release asteroid stations finally, please. Perhaps instead of replacing any existing stations just add them to a small percentage of asteroid belt orbits.
Visuals
1. Upgrade planetary rings to look better. A lot of them look pretty bad right now.
2. Fix the weird stuttering near planets finally.
Miscellaneous Gameplay
1. Stop having pirates interdict ships with empty cargo holds.
2. Stop having pirates ignore class of ship when deciding whether or not to attack. Sidewinders attacking Anacondas (PC or NPC) is just dumb.
3. Add Thargoids and possibly a few other alien races.
Exploration
1. Increase credit payouts for habitable planet data by 1000%.
2. Increase credit payouts for terraform candidate planet data by 500%.
3. Increase credit payouts for metal rich planet and metal rich planetary ring data by 200%.
4. Add system survey missions.
5. Implement level 2 and 3 scanning with significant associated benefits.
Mining
1. Add tractor beam or something similar to weapon options to allow for efficient ore gathering. This over a thousand years in the future and all miners have is a manual cargo scoop?
2. Add asteroid scanner.
3. Add mining missions (seperate from metal/mineral delivery missions).
Combat
1. Improve AI of higher level enemies (low level chumps should suck, so they're currently mostly fine).
2. Improve NPC teamwork to move away from the endless 1v1 situations. The few times I've actually had multiple enemies attack me at once has been both thrilling and sort of scary.
3. Make assassination missions not always be a 1v1 fight with a large vessel. Three Eagles or two Cobras (or whatever) would be a nice change of pace.
4. Add higher level combat missions that can only be accessed with high rep/rank where high end combat ships are actually needed. Every combat encounter can be beaten by a Viper or a Cobra right now.
5. Add scaling credit payouts to conflict zones.
6. Make conflict zones have some kind of randomized victory/defeat condition rather than simply being static shooting galleries. When the victory/defeat condition is met have the conflict zone despawn and have a new one spawn somewhere else in the system. Also have this more directly affect civil war outcomes.
7. Add escort/guard missions for miners and traders.
8. Add station attack and defense missions where a station must be defended from a sizable attack force or conquered by the attacking faction. Attackers would need to destroy all defenders and external station weaponry, while defenders would simply need to destroy or force all attackers to flee.
Trading
1. Add trading computer module that would save a certain number of visited stations' market data, and would allow side by side comparisons of prices.
2. Introduce dynamic market fluctuations to represent NPC trading (pretty sure a real simulation of NPC trading isn't possible due to having no dedicated server).
3. Introduce longer distance established trade routes. Stations that produce certain commdities should always have some kind of outlet for them. Otherwise why are they producing them? Two or three jumps is not that bad for a trader (even if real humans don't want to do it).
4. Re-design SL traders to buy more things and to not buy anything that can be purchased in the same system they are in, and replace the Type 9s with a massive NPC freighter with docking capacity (with luxury market as the only service).
5. Add higher level trading missions that require huge amounts of cargo space and pay out 100k credits or more.
Miscelaneous Mission Stuff
1. Improve mission income in general and add higher tier rep dependent missions that pay quite well. Missions cease to be relevant past a certain point presently because their payouts don't scale very well.
2. Add recovery salvage missions meant to recover lost goods for the rightful owner. Such goods would not be considered stolen when picked up (unless mission is abandoned).
System Signal Sources
1. Remove mission alternative givers, and replace them with remote communications. Also make them less common than 100% with certain mission types.
2. Make traders actual traders who will buy and sell non-rare, non-illegal commodities, and fix the flight AI of the Type 6s (are they drunk?).
3. Make pirate encounters more interesting and varied. Right now they are pretty much all identical with only slight variation.
4. Add short-lived distress signals (semi-rare) where you can save a ship or ships under attack from various numbers and types of pirates. On top of bounties receive a credit reward if successful.
5. Add chance of pirates, authority, or both arriving at salvage sites.
6. Increase the upper limit of salvageable goods at salvage sites by 3-4x.
Ships
1. Release a lot more ships in the sub-2 million credit price range.
2. Release more Imperial and Alliance ships and transition their security forces towards using those ships rather than the Federation-based ships.
Stations
1. Release Imperial and Alliance-specific stations. They wouldn't necessarily need to be that different. Just enough to feel like they are distinct to that faction. Maybe have independents use the station type of whichever major faction is most prevalent in their area.
2. Release asteroid stations finally, please. Perhaps instead of replacing any existing stations just add them to a small percentage of asteroid belt orbits.
Visuals
1. Upgrade planetary rings to look better. A lot of them look pretty bad right now.
2. Fix the weird stuttering near planets finally.
Miscellaneous Gameplay
1. Stop having pirates interdict ships with empty cargo holds.
2. Stop having pirates ignore class of ship when deciding whether or not to attack. Sidewinders attacking Anacondas (PC or NPC) is just dumb.
3. Add Thargoids and possibly a few other alien races.
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