New Player with a few suggestions

[evilroy]

This is an awesome game. Truly impressive. I have been playing for about a week and have really enjoyed it.

Here are a couple things I think would improve some of the more "non-combat" elements of the game, although they indirectly affect combat.

I am only a "competent" ranked player with about 35 contracts completed and 15 kills, but i have a fairly good ship with x5 drives and boosters, Excaliburs, etc, etc.

So the first thing might be that it may be a little too easy to make money; here are some "economy" things to consider:

1) Systems with asteroid belts should pay much less for mined materials than systems without them. Systems (or sectors) that pay highly for plat , diamonds, etc should maybe also have a proportionate amount of aggression...risk vs reward.

2) Planets where oxygen is mined, should really not pay for it, or not much anyway. As it is, you can exploit it by sitting on a landing pad, mining O2 and selling it to the planet for 100k (that I know of anyway) per cargo bay...and you can keep doing it for a while, racking up quick credits.

3) Systems should be more separated (and consistent) in supply and demand, from material to material, based on the native resources forcing some travel for profits.

one other thing that just would be cool to have:

4) a cargo bay status screen in the cockpit - material and count

Otherwise; congrats on making a very cool game well worth the asking price.

[Vice]

Good suggestions, thanks. Here are some comments:

1 - I like this idea, I'd need to explore the feasibility of incorporating it into the current localized market/economy structure system to dynamically adjust prices based on proximity to asteroids. To a certain extent, some of this is available at particular (often hidden) locations, far away from any asteroids.

2 - Agreed (far lower price), I'm adding this to my to-do list.

3 - This largely exists already (both price separation and value consistency), including specialized local economies that pay a lot more or less for particular items than in other locations. To utilize this option, observe the planet economic classes listed after their names on the nav map. An overview of the general pricing factors is available in the strategy guide under Economy Types and Values. You often have to travel a fair distance to get the best (or worst) price for various items.

4 - This is available now using a very simple text file mod option. Details are available in the customizing kit. Tbird uses one with cargo displayed on the HUD that he'd likely be willing to share if you want to check out an existing display profile.

Glad you're enjoying the game.

[Edited on 4-11-2010 by Vice]

[MMaggio]

Regarding point 2, since you're taking suggestions, it seems to me that harvested oxygen and water would be very valuable at the stations. More so the farther out stations.
Makes sense to me...

[Vice]

Rough estimate on those values will likely put a 400% premium on oxygen taken to stations versus the lower price on planets where it's readily available.

[Maarschalk]

One thing to consider thou is that eventhou oxygen is readily available at some planets not all have the technology to exploit it. So the City docks could be docks build by aliens on primitive planets for the exploit of their oxygen wich would make it valuable for the Evochron trade market at that city dock regardless of it's availability to the planets primitive locals...