Really, I cannot think of anything positive about the current USS system.
It breaks immersion in every possible way, be it the random and utterly senseless content it spawns, the obvious way it is linked to your ship's speed (you can even cruise at the minimum speed of 30km/s just close to any station, they still get spawned depending on your flight time, and just a few hundred kilometres from you).
For example, when you accept a mission to kill pirates in the same system, your best choice is to just leave the station, enter SC and throttle down to minimum speed, and wait for the next USS to spawn. Once you waded through enough biowaste cannisters and funeral processions, you eventually enter the standard encounter of a few authority vessels and a few pirates. So you shoot down the pirates, while trying not to hit the friendlies, and leave. Great.
Is this the ever unfolding galaxy I heard of? I can't remember Mr Braben talking about that kind of gameplay in his dev diaries two years ago. Right now the pirates never pirate other ships, the traders are not doing any trades, and the police is not doing any police work. Everything is just decoration, ad it's blatantly obvious.
I think it's high time that the developers give some substantial outlook on the future of this game. If they now focus on paid expansions and leave the core gameplay mechanics the way they are now, the game will be dead and forgotten in 6 months.
It breaks immersion in every possible way, be it the random and utterly senseless content it spawns, the obvious way it is linked to your ship's speed (you can even cruise at the minimum speed of 30km/s just close to any station, they still get spawned depending on your flight time, and just a few hundred kilometres from you).
For example, when you accept a mission to kill pirates in the same system, your best choice is to just leave the station, enter SC and throttle down to minimum speed, and wait for the next USS to spawn. Once you waded through enough biowaste cannisters and funeral processions, you eventually enter the standard encounter of a few authority vessels and a few pirates. So you shoot down the pirates, while trying not to hit the friendlies, and leave. Great.
Is this the ever unfolding galaxy I heard of? I can't remember Mr Braben talking about that kind of gameplay in his dev diaries two years ago. Right now the pirates never pirate other ships, the traders are not doing any trades, and the police is not doing any police work. Everything is just decoration, ad it's blatantly obvious.
I think it's high time that the developers give some substantial outlook on the future of this game. If they now focus on paid expansions and leave the core gameplay mechanics the way they are now, the game will be dead and forgotten in 6 months.