This is one of a long list of suggestions and complaints that I have about this game.
First a positive, I greatly enjoy this game, more so now that my friends are playing, though they're less and less inclined the play for the longer they try due to things like bulletin board missions, mining and hauling being far less profitable than grinding belt pirates.
A first suggestion here would be the shadow deliveries.
Many times now, I have left a station in, an Adder, A type seven, A Dropship, A type six, A Asp explorer. I usually have heat sinks and chaff on these set ups, when leaving a station or entering a station, half of the time I get scanned regardless of range or signature, does this mean silent running has no affect on NPCs? After many runs, it seems this way.
The only time I've seen silent running affect an NPC is they lose target lock at around 4 or 5 KM's but can still hit you with their kinetic weapons if you don't corkscrew like crazy, fair enough.
Chaff?
When a player pilot is scanning my booty, I meant bounty. if I deploy chaff, they lose the scan, they lose weapon lock and have to either manually drag their weapons over me or used fixed weapons.
When I chaff at an NPC? nothing.
But wait, it gets better.
Say I don't want to hunt player bounties, belt rats, run light cargo, trade commodities or any of the other barely profitable avenues.
What's this? 600,000 credits to run illicit cargo SIGN ME UP.
Mission failed.. Failed for what?
you don't even get a scan alert half of the time, you just fail the mission.
-Improvements!-
Make ECM jam targeting or shift targeting. Goodness knows I've been mercilessly slaughtered many times after a player or NPC uses ECM on me and my missiles gain me a 200 credit bounty, for which I'm torn to pieces, vaporized and dusted lightly on a nearby asteroid!
Make NPC's vulnerable to Chaff
Make Scan alerts the first step to failing, also make scan alerts more reliable.
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Combat and Upgrades.
I've yet to get much into the PvP or the larger scale combat.
Conflict zones seemed like a good idea but they can become repetitive easily or you simply just have every ship ever turn on you and drain your shield banks in a few seconds.
Grinding Belt Rats is profitable but soon loses it's appeal.
PvP is exciting, fun, terrifying, gratifying, frustrating. I love that tactics like using silent running, chaff, ECM, boosting turns, slick moves all work in PvP, that makes it feel like it's less about the ship and the weapon rating, more about the pilot, however.
Power Plants. If you chose to use the silent running trick, it -should- be risky but perhaps there should be more specific internals like, power plant shielding that would make it a small percentage stronger and a larger percentage hotter, you could either run with a weak power plant, or run with a stronger one but have to manage the heat a lot more effectively, thus limiting the time you could use silent running.
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My final suggestion and or complaint here would be the curve of the game.
You start, in the back side of no where, with a dumpster coated in sadness, but there's a glint of hope, the bulli-.. Nothing obtainable.
This is easily resolved by having a friend help you or just checking out some ship wrecks or similar instances.
While some missions are woefully under rewarding compared to farming belt rats, the ones that are suffer too much from the problems mentioned above to actually be profitable. You can be the most careful smuggler in the galaxy but if the game says no, the game says no.
Exploration seems like a good way to get into the game, you get money, you get to see cool sights, you don't have to get into big fights and be a pro pilot instantly. but why are there medical convoys out here.. Perhaps change the instance types the further you get from civilized space and reward the daring.
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Not quiet done with this game yet, still having fun with it but I feel like I've seen all the content I'm going to see save for going on month long expeditions to various points around the galaxy, hopeful with it being such a young game that content will be added in coming patches and expansions so we can move on from destroying generators or exploding rats.
First a positive, I greatly enjoy this game, more so now that my friends are playing, though they're less and less inclined the play for the longer they try due to things like bulletin board missions, mining and hauling being far less profitable than grinding belt pirates.
A first suggestion here would be the shadow deliveries.
Many times now, I have left a station in, an Adder, A type seven, A Dropship, A type six, A Asp explorer. I usually have heat sinks and chaff on these set ups, when leaving a station or entering a station, half of the time I get scanned regardless of range or signature, does this mean silent running has no affect on NPCs? After many runs, it seems this way.
The only time I've seen silent running affect an NPC is they lose target lock at around 4 or 5 KM's but can still hit you with their kinetic weapons if you don't corkscrew like crazy, fair enough.
Chaff?
When a player pilot is scanning my booty, I meant bounty. if I deploy chaff, they lose the scan, they lose weapon lock and have to either manually drag their weapons over me or used fixed weapons.
When I chaff at an NPC? nothing.
But wait, it gets better.
Say I don't want to hunt player bounties, belt rats, run light cargo, trade commodities or any of the other barely profitable avenues.
What's this? 600,000 credits to run illicit cargo SIGN ME UP.
Mission failed.. Failed for what?
you don't even get a scan alert half of the time, you just fail the mission.
-Improvements!-
Make ECM jam targeting or shift targeting. Goodness knows I've been mercilessly slaughtered many times after a player or NPC uses ECM on me and my missiles gain me a 200 credit bounty, for which I'm torn to pieces, vaporized and dusted lightly on a nearby asteroid!
Make NPC's vulnerable to Chaff
Make Scan alerts the first step to failing, also make scan alerts more reliable.
----------------------------------------------
Combat and Upgrades.
I've yet to get much into the PvP or the larger scale combat.
Conflict zones seemed like a good idea but they can become repetitive easily or you simply just have every ship ever turn on you and drain your shield banks in a few seconds.
Grinding Belt Rats is profitable but soon loses it's appeal.
PvP is exciting, fun, terrifying, gratifying, frustrating. I love that tactics like using silent running, chaff, ECM, boosting turns, slick moves all work in PvP, that makes it feel like it's less about the ship and the weapon rating, more about the pilot, however.
Power Plants. If you chose to use the silent running trick, it -should- be risky but perhaps there should be more specific internals like, power plant shielding that would make it a small percentage stronger and a larger percentage hotter, you could either run with a weak power plant, or run with a stronger one but have to manage the heat a lot more effectively, thus limiting the time you could use silent running.
----------------------------------------------
My final suggestion and or complaint here would be the curve of the game.
You start, in the back side of no where, with a dumpster coated in sadness, but there's a glint of hope, the bulli-.. Nothing obtainable.
This is easily resolved by having a friend help you or just checking out some ship wrecks or similar instances.
While some missions are woefully under rewarding compared to farming belt rats, the ones that are suffer too much from the problems mentioned above to actually be profitable. You can be the most careful smuggler in the galaxy but if the game says no, the game says no.
Exploration seems like a good way to get into the game, you get money, you get to see cool sights, you don't have to get into big fights and be a pro pilot instantly. but why are there medical convoys out here.. Perhaps change the instance types the further you get from civilized space and reward the daring.
----------------------------------------------
Not quiet done with this game yet, still having fun with it but I feel like I've seen all the content I'm going to see save for going on month long expeditions to various points around the galaxy, hopeful with it being such a young game that content will be added in coming patches and expansions so we can move on from destroying generators or exploding rats.