Game Improvements: A Few (Humble) Suggestions

Weapons & Combat

Ships

Professions

Factions

Death

Wrap-Up

After around 30 hours with the game, I'm still having fun, and I'm still hooked. That being said I really think we're all going to be pining for some patch / dlc love. So many of the mechanics feel shallow or incomplete. I'll try to keep this short and sweet.If you want to be effective in a fight you go with beam weapons. You can quibble over red or blue but the outcome is the same. NOTHING else comes close. Beam weapons are great against fighters. They are great against capitals. They don't miss. You're more or less forced to use beams as your broadsides, and beams for your turrets. Kind of a bummer.Why do missles (and oh god, the probe launcher) feel so unbelievably gimped? Want to play as a fast missle boat, staying back and picking your shots? Sorry, that's not really feasible. Want to go in, chainguns blazing? Hope you like pain.I don't think the beams need to be nerfed, it's more likely that the other weapons systems need a hard buff (ballistic limits need to be tweaked too). Just look at how they're all priced, the beams are clearly seen as the top tier weapons, but why must they be?You're basically stuck with fast/nimble/weak (like my favorite, the Baracuda), or slow/sluggish/strong. There should be more room to branch out here. Smaller ships should have higher top warp speeds, be less likely to be pulled out of warp, etc.I'd love to see each ship have some kind of passive bonus to certain systems (some get ballistic buffs, missle range, built-in modules, etc). As it stands you can't really choose the type of ship that suits your play style because you're forced down a particular path by the game's HEAVY reliance on close-quarters combat.The smaller faster ships SHOULDN'T be as powerful as the dreadnoughts (and they definitely aren't) but they shouldn't be completely useless in the high risk systems, either.Trading isn't really viable after the first few hours. Prices go stale / change too quickly and you can't really set up any kind of trade routes. Do I still make very lucrative trades from time to time? Sure. But it's mostly a function of luck and time. If you hault 50+ slots of loot around for long enough you'll just get lucky that way. It's not really "strategic" in a way that feels satisfying, though.Mining is ABYSMAL as a source of income. There are no upgrades to your equipment and it is quite literally the dullest thing you can spend your time on. It would be nice if you had a way to increase your yield, AOE mine with explosives, scan for rare materials, etc. Mining was clearly just tacked on. There should be a way to salvage gear, rare trade goods, and munitions from derelicts and debris. All in all, mining needs a good bit of love.Piracy needs a few tweaks. It's far too easy to still be in the Citizenry's good graces. They all still trade with me on-site, and the fact that I can sell them goods and steal them right back is kind of ludicrous. I know the buy quantities were nerfed but it's not enough.I wish the factions were treated more like guilds. Why grind rep with a given faction when you don't get access to special ships, equipment, modules, or map locations? It feels like a missed oppurtunity...This will probably be a bit more controversial, but having ZERO penalty for death is strange. I don't lose my ship, my cash, or my gear for getting in way over my head, I just get rolled back to the last station. It robs the game of any sort of "weight." I can barrel straight at that "high risk" mission without any kind of negative consequences.I could probably add even more but I'll have to take off for now. I may edit this thread later if it drums up any discussion. If it just slides into obscurity (which frankly, is far more likely) well, at least I tried :)