[REQUEST] Collection of minor improvements

[Conehead]

Just a short unsorted list of improvments which I think are worth to think about. It's likely that those have already been posted somewhere, but I want to give my own feedback to FD here.
All them should be relatively easy to implement, as mostly they are about balancing.

1. reduce maintenance costs (wear&tear) for some ships, especially for ASP. I fly an ASP and the W&T is really way to high. From my point of view that requires balancing.
2. FEDs should not interdict you, or at least it should not result in a repair bill (happened yesterday to me: 24.500cr repair although I did submit) .
OPTIONALLY: let the feds announce the interdiction in advance. COMM message "FEDs here, stop by for scan" or something similar is very simple to implement. This may lead to be fined when not stopping by.
3. reduce W&T for long super cruise travels. It can costs you easily 10.000 CR and more just to travel 500.000ls depending on your ship. That eats up most of exploration gains. Not reasonalbe for me.
4. let the "Auto Field-Maintenance Units" also repair thrusters, power plants and scanners. I don't see a reason why this should not be possible (also ticketed by me, maybe its a bug)
5. Display Surface scanners in module list (ticketed, as it may be a bug)
6. Decrease scanning time. It takes too long to scan a planet/star. Should be reduced by at least 25-50% in my opinion.
7. Increase gain from exploration. The time/cost ratio for exploration is too small. It can take you easily 30min or more to fully scan a system with lots of belts, moons and distant bodies. And then you get 5.000cr and a W&T bill of 7.000cr. That requires balancing.
8. Immediate path finder in galaxy map. When I select a target system I want to have an immediate path to there and don't want to wait for the spider web to develop. And it doesn't matter if I do 500ly or just 50ly. The web is useful for short distances below max 40ly. Anything above it just makes no sense and we need a quick "on-demand" path solution.

...

more will come, thats only for the moment

 

[Apep70]

I do like the idea of the Feds giving you a warning before Interdiciton.

 

[Seboss]

2. I'm not sure the warning message is such a good idea. It would make escaping scans too easy for smugglers; just drop of SC before the interdiction begins.
8. I don't think it's very useful that the galaxy map computes routes beyond the first jump. If there was a way to compute the route to a system designated by the player faster instead of computing the spider web, I would much prefer that.

 

[Conehead]

2. I'm not sure the warning message is such a good idea. It would make escaping scans too easy for smugglers; just drop of SC before the interdiction begins.
8. I don't think it's very useful that the galaxy map computes routes beyond the first jump. If there was a way to compute the route to a system designated by the player faster instead of computing the spider web, I would much prefer that.

to 2. in this case it would be enough to bring the warning as soon as the interdiction began. Then there is no escape from it.
to 8. Pathfinding is a common problem in computer games and there are fast and reliable algorithms for it. There are some path finders out in the web where you can check that, mainly they are using A* algorithms (check here for an example https://cmdr.club/routes/). Believe me that is not a big challenge to implement this.

 

[Scarcity]

Minor Suggestions

1. I love this game. I also love to play in a gaming community. I am new and ignorant, however, is there a way to split bounties if you are grouped up with other commanders? If not, this would be a great feature and encourage team work when bounty hunting and even committing piracy.

2. Story missions seem to be incredibly difficult. Not the ordinary "run some scrap metal" missions, but how do you find these people in three or more systems. Perhaps a little more of a lead on where, i.e. in an asteroid belt, or near a specific star or planet would be useful. Perhaps I'm just slow but I can't seem to find any of them.

3. Tutorials on commodities trading and earning money. I did mining with my sidewinder and saved up for an Eagle. Once I bought that I saved enough through bounty hunting to get a Cobra. However, it seems that the next level ship is in the millions of credits which appears to be unattainable. I am happy with my little ships and saved half a million but I am always wanting one of the big freighters.

4. Earn paint jobs and decals for ships through in game play. Can we do that already? All I have is the mercenary skulls and green paint.

 

[Veldryn]

3.

Instead of reducing costs (W&T and so on), I think it's better to increase income for bigger ships. "All jobs should scale".

Trade already scales, and the W&T cost is fine for them; other jobs don't.

7.

I'm not sure what Explorers need for their job to scale with bigger ships (Simply giving bigger rewards would increase the income of Haulers/Adders in the same proportion as ASPs, although they have very different maintenance costs, so that's not a good solution)

2. Story missions seem to be incredibly difficult. Not the ordinary "run some scrap metal" missions, but how do you find these people in three or more systems. Perhaps a little more of a lead on where, i.e. in an asteroid belt, or near a specific star or planet would be useful. Perhaps I'm just slow but I can't seem to find any of them.

When you scan USS, you may find a ship running away. He will tell you exactly in which system the target is. Then, go to that single System, randomly scan USS and you will find him.

 

[Captain_Chaos]

2. I'm not sure the warning message is such a good idea. It would make escaping scans too easy for smugglers; just drop of SC before the interdiction begins.

That shouldn't be a problem. The cops could easily target your wake and drop at the same location to do the scan anyway.