New Features

[TheViking]

I have been playing this great game and have had some thoughts about what could make it better, and so far my favorite idea is that as you upgrade your ship it should effect its abilities outside of combat as well. For example if you upgrade your engines you can jump farther as well as "quicker" so that the fleet doesn't catch up to you as far, you upgrade sensor you gain detailed information about nearby nodes, if you have cloak the rebels can't catch up to you as quickly things like that would make your choices even more important about what to upgrade when.

[Vost]

Those are all interesting ideas, but you have to consider that a lot of those would make certain systems "priority" systems for a lot of players, which would mean that most people would tend to upgrade certain things sooner, based on non-combat effects. I'm not saying that it would necessarily be a bad thing to have sort of meta-effects, but it's difficult to balance that kind of thing and retain the same kind of gameplay. I suppose it's true that we already do have these kinds of effects already - improved engines improve FTL drive charging, different upgraded systems might give you blue options &c., so it might turn out to be pretty practicable in the future.

[wanderthe5th]

If a hard mode were added, I think it would be cool if the advancement of the rebel fleet was determined in part by the amount of time spent in the combat map. Things would certainly get interesting if you had to decide whether you could really afford to sit around fully healing and repairing after each fight. It would be so mean, but so much fun to see just what kind of awful situations your ship would get into and what kind of chaos you, the player, could pull through.

Of course that would severely unbalance some of the ships in the early game. All else being equal, some starter loadouts just take longer to get through a fight.

[Doom Lich]

If a hard mode were added, I think it would be cool if the advancement of the rebel fleet was determined in part by the amount of time spent in the combat map. Things would certainly get interesting if you had to decide whether you could really afford to sit around fully healing and repairing after each fight. It would be so mean, but so much fun to see just what kind of awful situations your ship would get into and what kind of chaos you, the player, could pull through.

Of course that would severely unbalance some of the ships in the early game. All else being equal, some starter loadouts just take longer to get through a fight.

A big problem in terms of game balance of that mechanic is that it's a double punisher. It forces you to go out half repaired, AND it severely restricts how much scrap you can collect because you'd have much less time. I'd be amazed if anyone beat the boss with that sort of system.