After about 150 hours of play I wanted to offer my feedback for the development team. I've worked on a couple game projects and have some experience in game design, so I hope my feedback can be helpful.
First I want to say, I am quite fond of this game. It is very well made.
If I had to pick out the thing the game does the best, in my opinion, it is to convey the scale of space. No other game comes even close, not even Eve with its incredible range of ship sizes. Even just exploring a single system does a better job than any other game I've seen, as I watch my indicators say I'm getting closer and closer to my destination, but I don't see a thing. I am slowing down more and more but still nothing. Then I see a speck and think, that must be it. Then I get closer and realize no, its a gas giant with several specks around it. Then I get closer and see those specks are several moons, and my destination is a speck next to one of the moons.
Eventually I took a mission to fly a scientist deep into the galaxy. I passed thousands of stars, some with dozens of planets, many with none. Soon the idea settled that the chance of seeing another ship was virtually non-existent, I was thousands of lightyears away from civilization, I was completely alone. Then after literally days of travel I finally got to my destination... and there were like four NPC tourist ships just flying about going nowhere in particular. After days of not seeing another ship these guys are just chilling there talking about weddings and flight attendants like it's a popular weekend retreat. That was probably the most anticlimactic thing I'd ever experienced, but it was surpassed only a few days later when I got back to civilization. Out of habit I was in Open Play, since I had been hoping I might run into another explorer and we could freak out about the chances of it. On my way to turn in the mission and sell all my exploration data from about 2000 systems, about 50ls away from the station, some guy in an Anaconda interdicts me and blows me up just for the hell of it. I had no cargo, no bounty, nothing that would give him any benefit from killing me, but he had absolutely no risk nor penalty for doing so and I guess he was just bored and wanted to be a massive .
It was only after that I learned about the Mobius PVE group, and that's about the only reason I'm still playing.
Even so, I quite like the game, but there are a few things off about it that I would love to see addressed in the future. These are just my opinions and many of them, even all of them, may be wrong, but I wanted to provide the feedback. Also I need to preface this with the info that I spent most of my playtime trading, exploring, transporting, running missions of those sort, and a little bit of bounty hunting, so my feedback regarding things outside those areas might be off as I've only dabbled in the other aspects of the game. Also I've just realized I've not gotten into Powerplay yet, even though I've picked a faction I liked and made their home system my base of operations I have yet to actually pledge myself to that faction (because I do a lot of trading, transporting, and exploration and I got the impression that pledging myself to a faction would limit my mobility through the bubble).
Anyway, here are my thoughts, roughly organized. This is not intended to be a bug list, but rather my commentary, observations, and annoyances with the features and mechanics of the game. This is as of version 2.3.11.
Docking and Starports
Mining, Pirating, and Bounty Hunting
Trading
Combat and the Security Service
Transport Career
SRVs
Outfitting
Travel
Multicrew
Missions
UI
First I want to say, I am quite fond of this game. It is very well made.
If I had to pick out the thing the game does the best, in my opinion, it is to convey the scale of space. No other game comes even close, not even Eve with its incredible range of ship sizes. Even just exploring a single system does a better job than any other game I've seen, as I watch my indicators say I'm getting closer and closer to my destination, but I don't see a thing. I am slowing down more and more but still nothing. Then I see a speck and think, that must be it. Then I get closer and realize no, its a gas giant with several specks around it. Then I get closer and see those specks are several moons, and my destination is a speck next to one of the moons.
Eventually I took a mission to fly a scientist deep into the galaxy. I passed thousands of stars, some with dozens of planets, many with none. Soon the idea settled that the chance of seeing another ship was virtually non-existent, I was thousands of lightyears away from civilization, I was completely alone. Then after literally days of travel I finally got to my destination... and there were like four NPC tourist ships just flying about going nowhere in particular. After days of not seeing another ship these guys are just chilling there talking about weddings and flight attendants like it's a popular weekend retreat. That was probably the most anticlimactic thing I'd ever experienced, but it was surpassed only a few days later when I got back to civilization. Out of habit I was in Open Play, since I had been hoping I might run into another explorer and we could freak out about the chances of it. On my way to turn in the mission and sell all my exploration data from about 2000 systems, about 50ls away from the station, some guy in an Anaconda interdicts me and blows me up just for the hell of it. I had no cargo, no bounty, nothing that would give him any benefit from killing me, but he had absolutely no risk nor penalty for doing so and I guess he was just bored and wanted to be a massive .
It was only after that I learned about the Mobius PVE group, and that's about the only reason I'm still playing.
Even so, I quite like the game, but there are a few things off about it that I would love to see addressed in the future. These are just my opinions and many of them, even all of them, may be wrong, but I wanted to provide the feedback. Also I need to preface this with the info that I spent most of my playtime trading, exploring, transporting, running missions of those sort, and a little bit of bounty hunting, so my feedback regarding things outside those areas might be off as I've only dabbled in the other aspects of the game. Also I've just realized I've not gotten into Powerplay yet, even though I've picked a faction I liked and made their home system my base of operations I have yet to actually pledge myself to that faction (because I do a lot of trading, transporting, and exploration and I got the impression that pledging myself to a faction would limit my mobility through the bubble).
Anyway, here are my thoughts, roughly organized. This is not intended to be a bug list, but rather my commentary, observations, and annoyances with the features and mechanics of the game. This is as of version 2.3.11.
Docking and Starports
Starports have a very low speed limit in a very wide area around them and do not care if anyone follows them. Why does this exist?
I was fined once for banging into the starport when I was new to the game, but it has never happened since. If I do something really stupid and slap my Anaconda into the side of a space station I would like the game to recognize that and give me a slap on the hand. Maybe this is just a bug and it was supposed to be doing that all along.
Except on planets, there are no indicators to tell me if I am level relative to my landing pad, which means telling if my downward thrusters will dock me or throw my ship out of alignment only to bounce off the pad right next to the docking point is often just guesswork.
On the docking UI the image of the ship obscures the alignment markers, making it frustratingly difficult to line up if I was really close the first time but just missed it.
Landing pads do not allow me to land "backwards" despite having the capabilities to turn my ship around. I guess this could make sense depending on the mechanisms required to bring a ship into the hangar, but the only visual distinction that can be easily made out from a distance is the holographic pad number which can not be seen from several angles, including from above, an angle commonly used when trying to land at a planetary installation. Why not simply paint the number on the landing pad itself?
On small stations and planets for some reason it is necessary for the docks to turn my ship around before I can launch if I haven't entered the hangar... this makes sense for the starports, but elsewhere it's annoying and doesn't make sense from a practical perspective when I can just as easily fly out the same direction I was facing when I came in. Indeed this would actually make more sense for flow of traffic in these cases because any other ship wanting to land at that same pad will approach from the same direction that I am forced to leave (since the landing pads require ships to face a certain way).
Selecting outfitting while not in the hangar locks me out of all other menu options until I am in the hangar rather than just, say, requiring me to be in the hangar before selecting outfitting.
I was fined once for banging into the starport when I was new to the game, but it has never happened since. If I do something really stupid and slap my Anaconda into the side of a space station I would like the game to recognize that and give me a slap on the hand. Maybe this is just a bug and it was supposed to be doing that all along.
Except on planets, there are no indicators to tell me if I am level relative to my landing pad, which means telling if my downward thrusters will dock me or throw my ship out of alignment only to bounce off the pad right next to the docking point is often just guesswork.
On the docking UI the image of the ship obscures the alignment markers, making it frustratingly difficult to line up if I was really close the first time but just missed it.
Landing pads do not allow me to land "backwards" despite having the capabilities to turn my ship around. I guess this could make sense depending on the mechanisms required to bring a ship into the hangar, but the only visual distinction that can be easily made out from a distance is the holographic pad number which can not be seen from several angles, including from above, an angle commonly used when trying to land at a planetary installation. Why not simply paint the number on the landing pad itself?
On small stations and planets for some reason it is necessary for the docks to turn my ship around before I can launch if I haven't entered the hangar... this makes sense for the starports, but elsewhere it's annoying and doesn't make sense from a practical perspective when I can just as easily fly out the same direction I was facing when I came in. Indeed this would actually make more sense for flow of traffic in these cases because any other ship wanting to land at that same pad will approach from the same direction that I am forced to leave (since the landing pads require ships to face a certain way).
Selecting outfitting while not in the hangar locks me out of all other menu options until I am in the hangar rather than just, say, requiring me to be in the hangar before selecting outfitting.
Mining, Pirating, and Bounty Hunting
NPC Pirates will attack me for basically anything. NPC Pirates will be flying ships worth tens of millions and yet demand I hand over my $1000 of cargo.
Pirating is very impractical but there are a billion NPCs doing it anyway. Few items in the game are worth very much individually and items can only be looted one at a time. It requires more effort to gather all my loot than it would to just use a cheaper outfitting to bounty hunt, making more money, faster, and safer (given all the other bounty hunters). Attacking large trading ships doesn't make much sense either since I can't hold that much cargo because I've got so many of my optional modules tangled up in what is required to "effectively" pirate and they are probably just carrying several hundred tons of inexpensive items anyway.
Pirates and bounty hunters are so common, and traders so relatively rare, that the only way I have found to reliably find targets who have anything to even pirate is to camp resource extraction sites with the dozens of other pirates also there. This means the second I pick up any of my pirated loot one of the other pirates will scan me and demand I hand it over, at which point I may as well be bounty hunting.
Maybe I've been doing it wrong but mining without a swarm of bounty hunters nearby feels entirely pointless as every five seconds I am scanned by a pirate who will demand I empty my cargo hold if I have anything at all in it. I spend more time fighting off pirates than I do actually mining anything, at which point I may as well be bounty hunting.
Players have no way of compensating each other for working together, so a bounty hunter has no incentive to provide protection for a miner unless they are going to try to juggle cargo around, which is not worth the effort of the bounty hunter (whose ship is probably not outfitted for holding lots of cargo anyway).
It feels like mining and pirating exist only so bounty hunting can exist.
Pirating is very impractical but there are a billion NPCs doing it anyway. Few items in the game are worth very much individually and items can only be looted one at a time. It requires more effort to gather all my loot than it would to just use a cheaper outfitting to bounty hunt, making more money, faster, and safer (given all the other bounty hunters). Attacking large trading ships doesn't make much sense either since I can't hold that much cargo because I've got so many of my optional modules tangled up in what is required to "effectively" pirate and they are probably just carrying several hundred tons of inexpensive items anyway.
Pirates and bounty hunters are so common, and traders so relatively rare, that the only way I have found to reliably find targets who have anything to even pirate is to camp resource extraction sites with the dozens of other pirates also there. This means the second I pick up any of my pirated loot one of the other pirates will scan me and demand I hand it over, at which point I may as well be bounty hunting.
Maybe I've been doing it wrong but mining without a swarm of bounty hunters nearby feels entirely pointless as every five seconds I am scanned by a pirate who will demand I empty my cargo hold if I have anything at all in it. I spend more time fighting off pirates than I do actually mining anything, at which point I may as well be bounty hunting.
Players have no way of compensating each other for working together, so a bounty hunter has no incentive to provide protection for a miner unless they are going to try to juggle cargo around, which is not worth the effort of the bounty hunter (whose ship is probably not outfitted for holding lots of cargo anyway).
It feels like mining and pirating exist only so bounty hunting can exist.
Trading
Trading margins seem to be a relatively constant value rather than a percentage of the item's cost. Trading really expensive items often feels like a bad idea as it costs more capital, is a bigger loss for losing the cargo, makes pirates even more likely to attack, and all while not increasing the reward when compared to mid-priced items. As a trader I tend to avoid higher priced items, making pirating even less worthwhile.
The economy of the game feels very lackluster. It occurs to me that this is because there is not any cargo in the game that a player wants for any other reason than to immediately sell it. The supply and demand feels entirely arbitrary and if I haven't used some web tool to specifically look up a good place to sell stuff as long as the station offers more than what I paid for it I don't care because I can just fill up on whatever that station has a lot of supply of and sell it where ever else. There is never that feeling of finding out a demand that is not being met and getting the supply there and making bank. You don't feel like you figured something out that other people haven't yet as much as that you got lucky in a die roll. Players never go to a station's market to buy something unless they are trading. Why aren't outfittings, fuel, ammo, and maybe even ships commodities? That'd give a sense of supply and demand real quick. I could just see someone eagerly flying across the bubble to buy an Anaconda at a manufacturer just to fly it to the other side of the bubble and sell it for a profit then leave in a sidewinder. As a trader it annoys me that you can simply look up the best place to buy and outfit the biggest ships. Such a change would require a massive overhaul of how the game's markets work though.
The only money-sink is having your ship blown up, occassionally significant repairs, and the completely negligible cost of refueling and resupplying. If you keep playing the game you will end up with more money than you know what to do with. At a certain point working to make money becomes pointless and if your favorite part of the game is not the combat or the exploration the entire game will feel pointless.
The economy of the game feels very lackluster. It occurs to me that this is because there is not any cargo in the game that a player wants for any other reason than to immediately sell it. The supply and demand feels entirely arbitrary and if I haven't used some web tool to specifically look up a good place to sell stuff as long as the station offers more than what I paid for it I don't care because I can just fill up on whatever that station has a lot of supply of and sell it where ever else. There is never that feeling of finding out a demand that is not being met and getting the supply there and making bank. You don't feel like you figured something out that other people haven't yet as much as that you got lucky in a die roll. Players never go to a station's market to buy something unless they are trading. Why aren't outfittings, fuel, ammo, and maybe even ships commodities? That'd give a sense of supply and demand real quick. I could just see someone eagerly flying across the bubble to buy an Anaconda at a manufacturer just to fly it to the other side of the bubble and sell it for a profit then leave in a sidewinder. As a trader it annoys me that you can simply look up the best place to buy and outfit the biggest ships. Such a change would require a massive overhaul of how the game's markets work though.
The only money-sink is having your ship blown up, occassionally significant repairs, and the completely negligible cost of refueling and resupplying. If you keep playing the game you will end up with more money than you know what to do with. At a certain point working to make money becomes pointless and if your favorite part of the game is not the combat or the exploration the entire game will feel pointless.
Combat and the Security Service
Police brutality is ridiculous. If I accidentally hit a security service ship with a single stray laser I gain a bounty of less than $1000 for which the police and every bounty hunter in the area will immediately kill me. It would make much more sense to get fined for friendly fire and if my fines exceed a certain amount then it turns into a bounty. Bounties turn into fines, why can't it go the other way?
There is no button to clear my current target. When a target deploys chaff and I'm using gimballed weapons or turrets the best thing to do is to stop targetting them so I can use my weapons like fixed weapons. Pressing the target button again works fine unless there is another ship near my reticle, which can easily lead to shooting someone I did not mean to, which then leads to police brutality.
Turret weapons do not stop shooting when the target deploys chaff and I can not quickly make then stop, whic leads to police brutality. I have personally lost an Anaconda to this which then also lead to my wingman losing their ship.
There is no key binding to put full pips to a category. I would like to be able to hit shift up to instantly divert 4 pips to engines or shift right for weapons etc rather than having to tap it three or four times.
There is no button to clear my current target. When a target deploys chaff and I'm using gimballed weapons or turrets the best thing to do is to stop targetting them so I can use my weapons like fixed weapons. Pressing the target button again works fine unless there is another ship near my reticle, which can easily lead to shooting someone I did not mean to, which then leads to police brutality.
Turret weapons do not stop shooting when the target deploys chaff and I can not quickly make then stop, whic leads to police brutality. I have personally lost an Anaconda to this which then also lead to my wingman losing their ship.
There is no key binding to put full pips to a category. I would like to be able to hit shift up to instantly divert 4 pips to engines or shift right for weapons etc rather than having to tap it three or four times.
Transport Career
Any fines will upset crime-averse passengers. This includes loitering, bumping into other ships, and forgetting to ask for clearance. Apparently they are morally opposed to bad driving.
Some passenger missions reward me with random junk instead of just more money. This means when I am outfitted to transport I am required to use some of my limited module space for cargo racks or I may have to juggle outfitting every time such a mission comes up, which can be very frustating if I'm full of passengers and can't unoutfit most of my modules since they are occupied.
It is far too easy to unknowingly accept a contract to transport a criminal.
Contracts to transport researchers should specify in big bold letters that completing them might take several days of playtime.
I still do not know if completing these contracts gives me trading xp, exploration xp, some of both, maybe none, or if it depends on the mission. why is there no transporter rank?
It annoys me greatly that the stops of sightseeing passengers with multiple stops are only viewable when you first accept the mission. After that point you can only see their current destination. It also annoys me that they are very specific in the order that they want to see the things and that you can't just take them to all of the stops in which ever order makes the most sense with your route.
Why does the stats page show you how many transport missions you've done and who you've transported, but not how much money you've made doing so?
Some passenger missions reward me with random junk instead of just more money. This means when I am outfitted to transport I am required to use some of my limited module space for cargo racks or I may have to juggle outfitting every time such a mission comes up, which can be very frustating if I'm full of passengers and can't unoutfit most of my modules since they are occupied.
It is far too easy to unknowingly accept a contract to transport a criminal.
Contracts to transport researchers should specify in big bold letters that completing them might take several days of playtime.
I still do not know if completing these contracts gives me trading xp, exploration xp, some of both, maybe none, or if it depends on the mission. why is there no transporter rank?
It annoys me greatly that the stops of sightseeing passengers with multiple stops are only viewable when you first accept the mission. After that point you can only see their current destination. It also annoys me that they are very specific in the order that they want to see the things and that you can't just take them to all of the stops in which ever order makes the most sense with your route.
Why does the stats page show you how many transport missions you've done and who you've transported, but not how much money you've made doing so?
SRVs
SRVs have to face a specific direction to unload cargo onto the ship and to be loaded back onto the ship.. a minor annoyance.
SRV jump jets are disabled when close to the ship. If I have landed or recalled my ship and it is right next to a large crater I am forced to slow down immensely as I am suddenly incapable of rocketing over the pit, even if I am in the middle of doing so. It was quite the ride the first time I discovered this fact.
My SRV cargo scoop requires me to target each individual rock when mining in order to pick them up. This means when I am close enough to pick up my targetted rock, my view is such that I can not see the other rocks next to it in order to target them. This means to pick up all the rocks I turn off drive assist and drive forward and backward quite quickly in order to get just far enough back to target another rock and just far enough forward to pickup the rock. I am sure it looks like my SRV is severely malfunctioning, and though I have admittedly gotten quite good at this, I wish I didn't have to do it.
SRV jump jets are disabled when close to the ship. If I have landed or recalled my ship and it is right next to a large crater I am forced to slow down immensely as I am suddenly incapable of rocketing over the pit, even if I am in the middle of doing so. It was quite the ride the first time I discovered this fact.
My SRV cargo scoop requires me to target each individual rock when mining in order to pick them up. This means when I am close enough to pick up my targetted rock, my view is such that I can not see the other rocks next to it in order to target them. This means to pick up all the rocks I turn off drive assist and drive forward and backward quite quickly in order to get just far enough back to target another rock and just far enough forward to pickup the rock. I am sure it looks like my SRV is severely malfunctioning, and though I have admittedly gotten quite good at this, I wish I didn't have to do it.
Outfitting
Different limpit functions each require their own controller module while even the largest ships are very stingy on the amount of optional modules. This means basically no one besides a fuelrat will be outfitting the fuel transfer limpit controller. Sorry legitimate distress beacons, ain't nobody got modules for that.
When outfitting I frequently ran into attributes that I had absolutely no idea what they did and nothing in-game to tell me. In these cases I would turn to the internet to help me understand the mechanics around the attributes... but with many of them I still have absolutely no idea what they did after reading wikis, forums, and reddit threads about it. There really ought to be flavor text in-game or some sort of encyclopedia that explains what all these stats are. Its not exactly a choice when I have no idea what I am choosing.
With several upgrades offered by the engineers the text description mentioned effects that are not represented in the stats shown. I am still not sure if the text is wrong or not all the stats for these upgrades are shown.
I feel like the multipurpose ships are too good at everything. Why can the Anaconda stand toe-to-toe with every specialist ship? The Python doesn't get as good FSD range, but it as well does basically everything. Why not have some expensive specialty ships that get bonuses or something? Some expensive explorer ship that gets a bonus to FSD range. Some trading ship that gets a bonus to all its cargo capacity. A smuggling ship that has a bonus to heat efficiency. A fighting ship that gets a slight bonus to armor, shields, and weapons. Why does the Anaconda feel more effective as a transporter than the Beluga? What is the point of having a variety of ships if one of them is the best at everything? Everyone is either flying an Anaconda, working toward getting one, or flying a flashy faction ship even though their Anaconda is better.
When outfitting I frequently ran into attributes that I had absolutely no idea what they did and nothing in-game to tell me. In these cases I would turn to the internet to help me understand the mechanics around the attributes... but with many of them I still have absolutely no idea what they did after reading wikis, forums, and reddit threads about it. There really ought to be flavor text in-game or some sort of encyclopedia that explains what all these stats are. Its not exactly a choice when I have no idea what I am choosing.
With several upgrades offered by the engineers the text description mentioned effects that are not represented in the stats shown. I am still not sure if the text is wrong or not all the stats for these upgrades are shown.
I feel like the multipurpose ships are too good at everything. Why can the Anaconda stand toe-to-toe with every specialist ship? The Python doesn't get as good FSD range, but it as well does basically everything. Why not have some expensive specialty ships that get bonuses or something? Some expensive explorer ship that gets a bonus to FSD range. Some trading ship that gets a bonus to all its cargo capacity. A smuggling ship that has a bonus to heat efficiency. A fighting ship that gets a slight bonus to armor, shields, and weapons. Why does the Anaconda feel more effective as a transporter than the Beluga? What is the point of having a variety of ships if one of them is the best at everything? Everyone is either flying an Anaconda, working toward getting one, or flying a flashy faction ship even though their Anaconda is better.
Travel
Why during a hyperspace jump am I unable to access data on my ship? I get why navigation might be off limits, contacts, not wanting me to mess with any modules, or to try to eject anything or anyone. I can understand that it could be problematic technically if I tried to look at system maps or galaxy maps, but why can't I look at my ship's info? I want to look at my stats, my money, my rebuy costs, my transactions, my bounties, my inventory, the status of my modules, my materials, my data, synthesis recipes. Nothing pulls me out of the game more than the inability to do anything at all during a jump because I will quite often alt tab out of the game or do something on my phone. It is a constant source of immersion breaking for me and I hate it.
Please do something about the systems that have multiple stars in them but are separated by 250000+ ls. They're kind of bull. It's always a pleasant surprise to accept a mission one jump away and then realize it also includes 15m of supercruise. Idk if that means tweaking them so they aren't so far apart or more likely adding some sort of capability to the FSD that allows shorter jumps within a system.
Maybe this is part of the whole not understanding what the stats do, but I would really like it if unidentified signal sources would pop in from a bit farther away. Whenever I am in exploration mode and eager to check out every little thing that gets my attention I unvaringly notice the alert in my info panel, go to my nav panel, scroll until I can lock the signal as my destination, then have to turn around because I've already overshot the thing by a couple hundred ls.
Finding a specific location on a planet can be a pain if you're already in orbital cruise before locking it. In order to maintain my altitude and gain speed I basically have to point my ship into space, so I usually have to fly upside down and keep using head look to check the surface and see if the point is at a reasonable angle yet... or if I've passed it. While I am using headlook my ship will continue off straight ahead, increasing my altitude gain and bringing me out of the blue zone. Orbital Cruise would be a lot easier to use if when I took my hands off the controls flight assist would keep me at my current angle of ascent or descent. Then I could set it to 0 and cruise around the planet using headlook all I need to make sure I'm on trajectory instead of spazing between headlook and correcting my ship's orientation.
I HATE those cube-like space stations. Whenever I am smuggling, am wanted, or have a criminal on board I need to make sure I come out of supercruise pretty close to lined up with the mailslot, and if the mailslot is not facing me during my approach I have to fly around in a big spiraly thing in order to get the little model to rotate around so I can figure out which side the mailslot is on. When you've dropped out of supercruise if you're not currently targeting the station it has handy little arrows on the sides that point toward the mailslot, but being roughly triangular it can be difficult for me to read which direction they are pointing even then. I HATE those stations. It is far too difficult to find the mailslot from supercruise.
It is far to easy to forget I have a fighter out and engage my FSD in a non-emergency situation, unintentionally destroying my fighter. If there is a warning it is too easy for me to miss. Why doesn't my fighter pilot call out to me or something? Commander, don't leave me! or something like that.
Please do something about the systems that have multiple stars in them but are separated by 250000+ ls. They're kind of bull. It's always a pleasant surprise to accept a mission one jump away and then realize it also includes 15m of supercruise. Idk if that means tweaking them so they aren't so far apart or more likely adding some sort of capability to the FSD that allows shorter jumps within a system.
Maybe this is part of the whole not understanding what the stats do, but I would really like it if unidentified signal sources would pop in from a bit farther away. Whenever I am in exploration mode and eager to check out every little thing that gets my attention I unvaringly notice the alert in my info panel, go to my nav panel, scroll until I can lock the signal as my destination, then have to turn around because I've already overshot the thing by a couple hundred ls.
Finding a specific location on a planet can be a pain if you're already in orbital cruise before locking it. In order to maintain my altitude and gain speed I basically have to point my ship into space, so I usually have to fly upside down and keep using head look to check the surface and see if the point is at a reasonable angle yet... or if I've passed it. While I am using headlook my ship will continue off straight ahead, increasing my altitude gain and bringing me out of the blue zone. Orbital Cruise would be a lot easier to use if when I took my hands off the controls flight assist would keep me at my current angle of ascent or descent. Then I could set it to 0 and cruise around the planet using headlook all I need to make sure I'm on trajectory instead of spazing between headlook and correcting my ship's orientation.
I HATE those cube-like space stations. Whenever I am smuggling, am wanted, or have a criminal on board I need to make sure I come out of supercruise pretty close to lined up with the mailslot, and if the mailslot is not facing me during my approach I have to fly around in a big spiraly thing in order to get the little model to rotate around so I can figure out which side the mailslot is on. When you've dropped out of supercruise if you're not currently targeting the station it has handy little arrows on the sides that point toward the mailslot, but being roughly triangular it can be difficult for me to read which direction they are pointing even then. I HATE those stations. It is far too difficult to find the mailslot from supercruise.
It is far to easy to forget I have a fighter out and engage my FSD in a non-emergency situation, unintentionally destroying my fighter. If there is a warning it is too easy for me to miss. Why doesn't my fighter pilot call out to me or something? Commander, don't leave me! or something like that.
Multicrew
Its cool how multi-crew can share bounty claims, but there is no good reason anyone should join my crew for exploration, mining, smuggling, or anything else except for mentoring as my ship has the cargo and data and that is where the money comes from. Not sure how you would get around this one though.
It took us quite a bit of time to figure out how to get the gunner to actually be able to shoot the guns... and when he'd mess with his fire groups mine would be all messed up when the crew disbanded. Why is this so difficult? It doesn't even have a default keybinding.
There is no way to see what pilots are looking for multicrew, or to select a specific pilot if multiple are. I've checked once if anyone was looking for another crewman for bounty hunting and didn't find any so I thought, eh, must not be anybody looking for crew. At the time it didn't occur to me that there are like five other queues people could be waiting for crew in.
It took us quite a bit of time to figure out how to get the gunner to actually be able to shoot the guns... and when he'd mess with his fire groups mine would be all messed up when the crew disbanded. Why is this so difficult? It doesn't even have a default keybinding.
There is no way to see what pilots are looking for multicrew, or to select a specific pilot if multiple are. I've checked once if anyone was looking for another crewman for bounty hunting and didn't find any so I thought, eh, must not be anybody looking for crew. At the time it didn't occur to me that there are like five other queues people could be waiting for crew in.
Missions
The payouts and requirements of a lot of stuff on the mission board seem very RNG. From the same mission provider I can have two hauling missions transporting the same type of goods, but one of them pays 10x as much, wants me to carry 1/10th the amount, and go half the distance. What?
Does anyone ever do those "Source me X of Y missions"? I was quite into the trading and mission running, but every time I saw one I was like ...Yeah, no thanks. I'd have to go looking around for a station that even sells the stuff and then when I got there they might be in lockdown, then when I'd finally get it back they'd pay me pocket change. Na, I'm good.
Does anyone ever do those "Source me X of Y missions"? I was quite into the trading and mission running, but every time I saw one I was like ...Yeah, no thanks. I'd have to go looking around for a station that even sells the stuff and then when I got there they might be in lockdown, then when I'd finally get it back they'd pay me pocket change. Na, I'm good.
UI
The info panel has useful information that very often disappears before I am done with it. It would be very useful if I could do something like headlook at it and have it bring up the last couple things that were printed on it.
The contacts panel does not show me my distance from each contact, which can make trying to collect materials and cargo involve a lot of back and forth I might notherwise not have done.
The navigation panel seems to have some sort of memory as to where the cursor was before. This is not particularly useful when I've entered a new system and need to pick something close to me and the cursor suddenly pops down to halfway through the list of systems I can jump to.
The list of systems I can jump to in the navigation panel is not particularly useful when I have no idea what direction they are in until I've locked it and pointed my ship toward it. It's basically only useful to me if I need to quickly jump to any other system or I happen to know the systems immediately adjacent to the system I am in. Maybe it should be in a separate location from the destinations within the current system?
The contacts panel does not show me my distance from each contact, which can make trying to collect materials and cargo involve a lot of back and forth I might notherwise not have done.
The navigation panel seems to have some sort of memory as to where the cursor was before. This is not particularly useful when I've entered a new system and need to pick something close to me and the cursor suddenly pops down to halfway through the list of systems I can jump to.
The list of systems I can jump to in the navigation panel is not particularly useful when I have no idea what direction they are in until I've locked it and pointed my ship toward it. It's basically only useful to me if I need to quickly jump to any other system or I happen to know the systems immediately adjacent to the system I am in. Maybe it should be in a separate location from the destinations within the current system?
