I know (personally) 3 players who came back because you're ending the grind time wasters. SCO? GREAT. High Grade spawn sites? Perfect. Engineering redux? Good start, keep going. More tweaks to bring players back:
Cockpit:
SCO Cooldown needs an indicator somewhere
Engineering:
1)Just make it a one stop upgrade. Allow a "Upgrade to level X" and just require the materials, one click, done.
2) Once you unlock an engineer, make all their blueprints and experimental effects pinned permanently. Nobody enjoys jumping 20 times in a FDL just to apply an experimental effect. Get rid of the "pin an item" and just open up the appropriate prints to the in station engineering tab. If you think it's too easy add some more fetch quests to unlock the engineer to begin with... not boring ones, smart ones. Maybe involving their particular power?
3) Add material traders to all the engineer planets
Fleet Carriers:
Add a filter so when you're jumping the carrier you can see, at top level, which systems are full.
Xeno-Biology:
1) Add more canisters so you can take incomplete samples. As it stands, if you have 1/3 samples you can't get a different species. It's kinda silly since the graphic shows a removable can from the device. Maybe add an engineering blueprint or add more canisters per upgrade of the Artemis suit (Level 1 is like now, Level 2 allows 2 canisters, 3 is 3 etc.)
2) Can you make the brain trees destructible so we don't get stuck on them?
Module Swaps:
1) A huge help would be to re-work the hangar system. Make the storage unlimited and when you put a ship "away" it gets auto stripped in the game back end. When players see their ships, they're looking at a blueprint and the modules get pulled as needed. Basically trying to eliminate the current system which is pull a ship, take off a module, pull another ship, install that module. It's so many hits on the server, and I've lost a pre-engineered unique weapon before when the server hit a snag. On the upside one time I also got a fully engineered Corvette duplicated, which wasn't bad, but still... it's a bit of a time waster.
2) Get rid of that timer for pulling ships and modules. The only players who like it are the ones with no life who read these posts. "Realism" isn't a thing in a game where you can instantly fix, refuel, rearm and stock a ship, and swap out a nuclear reactor in a second. It's a game. Be a game. If they want to role play waiting, they can do that by just walking away from the PC.
3) Add the ability to send modules/ships to a destination as well as retrieve them.
Anyway, food for thought. You will GAIN players by reducing time sinks, and thereby gain money. You're seeing it NOW, these are things guys like me (Beta Backers) have been suggesting for the last decade, and it's working. You're getting more profitable by making it fun. Watching a timer count down isn't fun, it's tedious.
Cockpit:
SCO Cooldown needs an indicator somewhere
Engineering:
1)Just make it a one stop upgrade. Allow a "Upgrade to level X" and just require the materials, one click, done.
2) Once you unlock an engineer, make all their blueprints and experimental effects pinned permanently. Nobody enjoys jumping 20 times in a FDL just to apply an experimental effect. Get rid of the "pin an item" and just open up the appropriate prints to the in station engineering tab. If you think it's too easy add some more fetch quests to unlock the engineer to begin with... not boring ones, smart ones. Maybe involving their particular power?
3) Add material traders to all the engineer planets
Fleet Carriers:
Add a filter so when you're jumping the carrier you can see, at top level, which systems are full.
Xeno-Biology:
1) Add more canisters so you can take incomplete samples. As it stands, if you have 1/3 samples you can't get a different species. It's kinda silly since the graphic shows a removable can from the device. Maybe add an engineering blueprint or add more canisters per upgrade of the Artemis suit (Level 1 is like now, Level 2 allows 2 canisters, 3 is 3 etc.)
2) Can you make the brain trees destructible so we don't get stuck on them?
Module Swaps:
1) A huge help would be to re-work the hangar system. Make the storage unlimited and when you put a ship "away" it gets auto stripped in the game back end. When players see their ships, they're looking at a blueprint and the modules get pulled as needed. Basically trying to eliminate the current system which is pull a ship, take off a module, pull another ship, install that module. It's so many hits on the server, and I've lost a pre-engineered unique weapon before when the server hit a snag. On the upside one time I also got a fully engineered Corvette duplicated, which wasn't bad, but still... it's a bit of a time waster.
2) Get rid of that timer for pulling ships and modules. The only players who like it are the ones with no life who read these posts. "Realism" isn't a thing in a game where you can instantly fix, refuel, rearm and stock a ship, and swap out a nuclear reactor in a second. It's a game. Be a game. If they want to role play waiting, they can do that by just walking away from the PC.
3) Add the ability to send modules/ships to a destination as well as retrieve them.
Anyway, food for thought. You will GAIN players by reducing time sinks, and thereby gain money. You're seeing it NOW, these are things guys like me (Beta Backers) have been suggesting for the last decade, and it's working. You're getting more profitable by making it fun. Watching a timer count down isn't fun, it's tedious.
