[Suggestion] Love the game!

[Amedeus]

First of all I would like to say how much I enjoyed the game being an older video gamer, it really took me back to the mid 90's when gamers were use to a hard challenge. It has a good solid concept for a game that is a bit of a mix of The Sims (with the crew members), and a bit Star Trek (spaceship battles and encounters). Another game comes to mind Malfador Machinations put out a space adventure game called Starfury that is bit more sandbox style but doesn't have any of the fun crew interactions or the strong micro-management action to it. The game all together feels like I am the captain in my own episode of Farscape/Battlestar Galactica/Firefly, where my decisions or rather indecision lead to the death of crew mates.. I will forever mourn poor LT Cake who burned to death in the engine room because I was too busy trying to destroy the enemy before we all died. While the rest of us survived I couldn't help but feel entirely responsible for my little pixilated crewmen's death who had begun to level up his repair skill to impressive levels, because I knew I could have hit space bar, and seen him in trouble and moved him out of there or gotten him help. But that really is the joy of the game isn't it. I figured out an all out klingon style assault can take down most enemies but at the cost of tunnel vision and not realising your crewmen are dying from lack of oxygen or fires or boarding parties..

So here is my suggestions for ways to make the game more mainstream. Most gamers today are really leaning towards sandbox style gameplay, its just fun. While limitations and scripted storylines are okay from time to time the real long term enjoyment from a game comes from replayibility or continued playability. Examples, Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3, GTA, open world games with storylines, the idea that people can explore and do as they please, run amock in the universe as a pirate looking for upgrades and technology and crew members or just new ships or they can just charge headlong into the story if they want. The game style is just proving too much fun across the board because it lets people play the way they want too.

Next is graphics, yes I understand its a small indie game but like Minecraft you got some money from it and its pretty popular and fun game, I don't think top of the line fps graphics will work very well here but I do think the kind of overhead angle look of games like The Sims would fit nicely, a bit more detail in the ship enviroment and the people, the 90's graphics are fun, but even then its more nostalgia and will grow old quickly.

More options during events/combat. There should be an obvious Risk vs Reward system here, were blowing up a damaged ship would result in fewer rewards from salvaging broken junk from space as opposed to boarding them, killing the crew and stripping out systems and resources, Towing the taken over ship to a system and selling it as is should be an option, so is like the Pirates use to do, take over the new ship, repair it, move all your guns and tech to the new ship which is larger and better. I would like to see some underhanded options as well, example if you are coming up to a hostile Mantis ship, and you have a Mantis crew member on the bridge, you could use an option to try and convince them (with a % of success probably based on the Mantis characters stats) that you are a friendly ship. Then when they let their guard down, you open fire! (Don't judge me, the universe is a dangerous place)

Ship Scale and Crew. I like the small ships and crew, I eventually somehow gathered up like 8 crew member in that first ship, and it started to feel a little cramped, I had people standing around doing nothing but it still felt small for micro-management. I would like to see options of much larger ships and larger starting crews with the possibility of recruiting say 40 or 50 people on a ship you can micro-manage, and possibly give them classes or individual stats, one human might be good at fighting, while another might be a good engineer, so obviously one of them is going to work as security or a boarding soldier while the other is going to run around and fix stuff. This would add to the sense of attachment to certain crew members, as you do not want to lose 1 of your 2 people who are good at fixing stuff as opposed to them all being equal in every regard, a little more individuality.

Keeping this game's ideal of difficulty while just giving it more depth and gameplay. Maybe even some day you could buy pistols and rifles from traders to arm your crew members with them, this level of micro-management in a space rpg game like this, would be golden. Ramp up the difficulty by player choice. If they can manage a huge ship with lots of people and fight multiple ships at once, let em! if they want to pilot a smaller ship with a crew of 10 a la Firefly, able to run away and do hit and runs on larger ships, they should be able to. Key is making the game able to adjust to people who want more of a challenge while not alienating those who are more comfortable with an easier to manage enviroment. I would really love to see this game grow and develop into something Epic!

[Marioking9]

I think all of those suggestions are awesome, apart from the graphics update. I think the graphics is a nice charm, simple and not overwhelming. Taking over ships would be VERY awesome. (Imagine taking over an auto scout )