Some feedback

[madks13]

Hello, i just finished the content available in EA, i also finished Starcom : Nexus right before starting Unknown Space, so i would like to give some constructive feedback on my experience :
1. I love the new crew system. In nexus it wasn't obvious how the random parts of planet exploration worked, but this is much clearer and understandable.
2. That being said, i think we should be able to get crew exp trough battles. Not getting any exp for battling is like saying i am doing all the work and the crew is just sitting at the back cheering me on. I can suggest one possibility to this : the crew would get 1 (one) exp point per battle. No not per enemy killed, but per battle. Meaning as long as we are in battle, no matter how many enemies we destroy, the crew would get 1 exp. I am aware that players could do something like run away to get out of combat, then go back to kill the rest of the enemies, but i think that is acceptable since it wastes a lot of time. It can also be abused only at the start, since later on, with Devout ships being upgraded they can just hop around the player and it makes it very hard to exit battle. There could also be some kind of internal check for the power of the enemy so killing small/easy enemies doesn't count towards gaining experience. This would remove the possibility of players keeping some small sized enemies around (like the Red Raiders factories that produce only easy to kill enemies).
3. I like the heat system, it makes us think how to design our ships to avoid efficiency loss. However, i think the component limits are too small because of it. For example, bulkheads take a lot of space, any armor for that part, so we are forced to either have high defense and no offence or the other way around, anything in between simply does not feel satisfactory. I know this is EA and a lot of parts are still not inside the game, which is why we would be able to build bigger ships, especially since it seems that some modules would have more upgrades thus taking more space on the ship.
4. Manual Havok is a pain. I liked the automatic Havok even if sometimes it fired on my allies when in an asteroid field. Is it possible to add an option to make it automatic? I know that i can select "All" in secondary weapons, but i don't remember it being activated by that.
5. Crew to battlestations feels useless. I finished all quests and i used this feature only 2 times. The first was when the game informed me i have this skill, to test it out, without any enemy near me. The second was against the first group of Red Raiders when i remembered i had this skill. Never again. So far, it feels like there is no incentive to use it. If you have a good enough ship, there would be no need to use it. This just gave me a good idea : how about crew gains 1 exp if they kill a good enough enemy while the skill is active? Only 1 exp can be gained per activation but the enemy can't be too easy to kill compared to the player's ship. For example : being in an OP cruiser but killing a scout would be too easy so the crew wouldn't be able to gain any exp? This would give incentive to use it, and time it right as well as design ships for that kind of combat instead of the hit and run that seem to be the current fighting strategy.
6. The notices part is basically invisible. I did notice the notices and read a few of them but basically i pay it no mind. I think a lot of other players are the same. Since this is EA i am not sure what the purpose of this is, but i think it could be used to add exp or attributes to the crew. For example, i remember seeing a notice that one of the crew members was giving a speech about some subject they specialize in. This could be used, for example, to start a personalized quest for said crew member, doing some research and getting them a +1 in their specialized field (like Engineering). Or there could be a series of conferences on Biomed and the player should be present for each of them, and send the same crew member (allowed only one at a time) so that crew member can gain a +1 to biomed. This could be a great way to improve the crew in an organic way.
7. Speaking of, in Nexus we had the date-time being displayed in the HUD, but here i don't see it. Will this be displayed at any point in the future?
8. Concerning the crew again. I didn't know that the 6 points given per level up were shared among the whole crew, and not per crew member. I did wonder about that so i saved before distributing points. I think the system is ok, just maybe it should be more obvious that those are shared points?
9. I would like to see the total points distributed per crew member. Sometimes it is not easy to know which crew member is missing points. Especially if you want specific specializations per crew member and are not giving them 1 point per level up. This would make it easier to keep count on whose turn it is.

That is all i can think of for now. I love Nexus and love this one, can't wait for the release.

[joelfeig]

I played the first one and had a blast and I'm thoroughly enjoying the new one. My two cents.

1- More options for weapons selection. Right now you can have one of your secondaries keyed to the space bar or you can have all of them. There's no in between. It would be nice to be able to hit the 1, 2, 3, etc. key and fire things off individually. Don't get me wrong, there are times when the space bar needs to be mashed, but there are also times when you want to be a little more discerning.

2- More non-combat modules. The biggest thing that comes to mind is a med bay but I can think of other things that might be of interest as well.

3- Better resource harvesting. This actually ties into number 2. Add things like mining lasers (and more things to mine), refineries, processing plants, etc. Make the player try and find a balance between having a planet killer and being able to build a planet killer.

All in all, really well polished and impressive, especially considering this is pretty much being done by a one person operation. :)

[Mimung]

Originally posted by madks13:

3. I like the heat system, it makes us think how to design our ships to avoid efficiency loss. However, i think the component limits are too small because of it. For example, bulkheads take a lot of space, (...)

you can leave blank space.

i would love to see heat-sinks and that the system is more pronounced.

Originally posted by joelfeig:

1- More options for weapons selection. Right now you can have one of your secondaries keyed to the space bar or you can have all of them. There's no in between. It would be nice to be able to hit the 1, 2, 3, etc. key and fire things off individually. Don't get me wrong, there are times when the space bar needs to be mashed, but there are also times when you want to be a little more discerning.

2- More non-combat modules. The biggest thing that comes to mind is a med bay but I can think of other things that might be of interest as well.

I would love some autofire optionality, preferably to set guns to point defence modes

Yes more fluff modules to increase immersion.
Better Radar, ECM/ECCM, Missile Factory, Range Increase (diff weps) Different Shield options like regen/hardeners, Trade Module,
Science Module etc. (from the top of my head)

[Gamerzilla]

Originally posted by joelfeig:

3- Better resource harvesting. This actually ties into number 2. Add things like mining lasers (and more things to mine), refineries, processing plants, etc. Make the player try and find a balance between having a planet killer and being able to build a planet killer.

Honestly this should be an option under the drone category. You can have an attack drone option, and a mining drone option that targets asteroids and other space debris only but does so in a large area around your ship, then brings back stuff to the ship.

[Obdy]

Little feedback, not connected to the ideas above, but didn't want to start a new thread.

Since in the mid to late game one may like to build idiotly big ships, it would be nice to have a way to mount multiple times the same piece by like holding ALT while mounting the piece.
For example i sometimes used a 14 engine ship to explore the outher parts of the map, and dragging 14 times one engine at a time was kinda tedious.
Hope I was sufficiently clear.

p.s. if something like this does exist, I was not able to find it.

[dccurtis79]

The combat in Starcom games is amazingly good, the best in genre personally. And the aesthetic is superb. if you can implement mining (that works) and trading (that works) and can stand on their own (and maybe colonies? hehe), SC: Unknown Skies will be the crown jewel in this genre, hands down. Here's looking at you, Starsector (I know, Starsector is boss but Starcom is amazing and immediately fun, not fun later on after the steep learning curve and many restarts)
Edited to add... The ship building is clearly a massive draw card, what I mean is the game you already have plus mining and trading systems... I can't even finish the thought :D
I know all of this maybe too much to ask, but one can dream...