First off, a friend and I jumped in together and we’re having a great time! I can hardly wait to see where the game goes. It’s not easy to just pick up on at all but after playing for 10-12 hours, we’re finally sort of getting used to it.I do fear however, that the game is going to get extremely repetitive in a short period of time.
That said, the two most aggravating things for both of us have been this (with number one being WAY worse.
Docking - the docks are slim and I feel they should be widened. I don’t understand beating your shields to death, just trying to get in or out of the docks. The worst part though? Trying to find the right dock for your ship. It’s a complete nightmare! To me (and I know nothing about coding) the docks should be color coded or all should be red accept for the one for your ship type, have icons or something to differentiate between them. I can honestly say, I’ve probably spent 2 hours in total, just trying to dock in my short time played. This part is a nightmare, honestly.
Navigation - I realize it’s space and up can be anywhere but I feel there should at the very least be a compass, or even just a North arrow on the radar. I’m finally getting to understand the radar a a tad but it’s not simple for sure. So for instance, I pull up the missions and see that I need to go to “station a”, I mark it on my HUD and spent minutes looking in every direction, to spot planet “name” that “station a” is associated with, before I can finally take off to it.
On the same topic, I wish it were somehow easier to know that you have to go all the way around a planet to get to said station, while many times, we assume the station is on the ground. Could the stations have some sort of a color code or even words differentiating them?
Last but not least is the hugely obvious - there should definitely be an in-game tutorial. I also think a “dueling arena” scenario would be cool. This could be used not only for practicing as a beginner but just for people to go duel. It could also be cool to program in so that you could spawn NPC’s to play against of you choose to do so for practicing against them. I must say, being so ignorant to the game when first stepping in and actually playing against people that were good at it was pretty overwhelming and I’ve seen several people rage quit over in just my first two days.
Anyway, I tried to keep it short for you - if you can change the docks ASAP, that would be FANTASTIC!
If you have set the station as target, it should be highlighted on the circular radar around the center of the HUD. Just turn in that direction until it gets in the middle of the screen.
Structures have a type abbreviation in their name: factories and bases are on the ground, stations are in space.
Structures located on the other side of a planet should have their name be blinking on the HUD.
North? Like what side the poles point of the gas giant and moons? I don’t see how that’d be useful…
You already have visual representations like dark-side and light-side that is more useful than that.
The map does really suck, though. It needs to be 3D like the 3D view in Elite or an RTS.
This is definitely one of the biggest problems in the game that needs fixed ASAP. Putting the ship category icons on each side of the docks seems like the best solution for me. It could also highlight docks for your current ship in a lighter shade of blue or turquoise.
Didn’t take me long to realize the flashing icons means it’s on the other side. I would MUCH prefer the icon to be dashed and solid (like the lines you often see bordering a caution sign) instead of blinking, though. The blinking is both annoying and not as clear imo.
It’s also obvious due to the frame of reference and perspective.
seems to me the simplest and most obvious solution is just to color code the dock types. blue for fighters, purple for larger ships, yellow for cap ships, etc.
How is it obvious that purple is larger ships?.. What association is there to larger ships and purple? None. That’s just arbitrary and not intuitive at all.
Totally agree with you about the docks. I think there are 2 possible solutions that would work the best.
Change the models so that fighter/bomber docks are a completely different shape from Corvette docks. Corvettes could stay rectangular as they are now, but fighter/bomber docks could be circular or square. Either way they should have details to make them visually distinct, like different edges or “landing lights”. This is definitely pretty time intensive for the devs though as it involves altering the models of every station.
This may be drastic, but hear me out. Get rid of the difference. Seriously, why can’t I repair my fighter at a corvette bay? Fighters, bombers, and corvettes are all classed as “small ships” and are almost the same size. Let’s just have 1 universal bay that any of those 3 can repair at and call it done. Does the distinct bay actually add fun to the gameplay? I’m willing to argue for most players that answer is no. If you want to make it even more useful I would suggest making each bay a 2x2 design (essentially stacking 1 corvette bay on top of another), or even 3x3, but that gets back to changing the models and the time involved there.
It should really simply just light up the dock you can dock to. If it’s not lit up, it could mean it’s been disabled OR it’s not for your ship.
As far as being unable to repair a fighter at a corvette bay, there is a balance/gameplay reasoning behind people prioritizing which they want to destroy. Destroying fighter bays is pointless if people can just repair/rearm at corvette anyway.