Or poor game-design decisions. All nothing more than my particular opinion.
Could have had three tiers of ships;
1) Regular engines, effective range a single planet and its moons and stations.
2) Super-cruise drive, giving an effective range of all planets within a system and nearby stars too.
3) Hyper-drive, as it is now.
Trading accordingly but with an option to have another player or NPC ship you and your crate out to another system where trading was better (for a fee). The depth advantages are obvious I think but maybe the required delayed gratification component would be too much for most players in the devs' estimation. But the costs would have been huge for drives instead of bigger ships, which would have been far more realistic. Shoehorn an SC drive into a Sidewinder but lose most of its cargo capacity, or wait and buy a bigger ship, run it with normal engines until you'd saved your pennies and then buy the SC drive for that one. Blah blah.
Cockpits...spin-around chair, bays for avionics. Blanked out until a saucy bit of kit could be afforded and slotted in. Functional eye-candy, stuff on which to spend credits. What bloke doesn't love a tech-complex cockpit with dials and knobs and buttons. And a stereo. The thing we have now looks like something out of a Toys-R-Us catalogue.
Some stuff can be added later (or sold as DLC) but other things have missed the boat. Lack of talent in the team or constrained by cost and/or coding issues, I have not a clue. I can see the gaping holes but maybe my vision is impaired by ignorance.
Bottom line: it all feels a bit half-baked and rushed. Very little depth. Almost a tuppence worth of tar scenario.
Anyway, it's just this particular backer's opinion.
Could have had three tiers of ships;
1) Regular engines, effective range a single planet and its moons and stations.
2) Super-cruise drive, giving an effective range of all planets within a system and nearby stars too.
3) Hyper-drive, as it is now.
Trading accordingly but with an option to have another player or NPC ship you and your crate out to another system where trading was better (for a fee). The depth advantages are obvious I think but maybe the required delayed gratification component would be too much for most players in the devs' estimation. But the costs would have been huge for drives instead of bigger ships, which would have been far more realistic. Shoehorn an SC drive into a Sidewinder but lose most of its cargo capacity, or wait and buy a bigger ship, run it with normal engines until you'd saved your pennies and then buy the SC drive for that one. Blah blah.
Cockpits...spin-around chair, bays for avionics. Blanked out until a saucy bit of kit could be afforded and slotted in. Functional eye-candy, stuff on which to spend credits. What bloke doesn't love a tech-complex cockpit with dials and knobs and buttons. And a stereo. The thing we have now looks like something out of a Toys-R-Us catalogue.
Some stuff can be added later (or sold as DLC) but other things have missed the boat. Lack of talent in the team or constrained by cost and/or coding issues, I have not a clue. I can see the gaping holes but maybe my vision is impaired by ignorance.
Bottom line: it all feels a bit half-baked and rushed. Very little depth. Almost a tuppence worth of tar scenario.
Anyway, it's just this particular backer's opinion.