Yeah, overall I am pleased. Still, I find the game has a few issues that need to be addressed.
1. Combat is a bit....not quite boring, but not really inspired either. Each battle is all about focus firing on one ship after the other. The AI is also a sucker when it comes to splitting up their forces by getting them to chase single insignificant decoy ships.
Possible Fixes:
a) -AI needs to learn to keep its forces together during combat (and prior to combat as well).
-AI needs to learn to use focus fire.
c) -Ships getting hit during combat should suffer some kind of accuracy penalty (weapon fire causes hull vibrations that throw off accuracy). This would also help reduce the importance of focus fire during combat.
d) -Damaged ships should suffer from reduced speeds/maneuverability/fire rates. This would further add to the depth of combat.
e) -large weapons targeting frigates should have a tiny chance of missing (right now, only strike craft have any chance of dodging weapons fire). This would encourage the use of frigates a bit. Maybe even Cruisers should have a 1% chance of dodging big weapons. I think only capital ships should be hit 100% of the time.
2. Speeds are alright now, but the gravity wells seem very constricted.
Possible Fixes
a) -Enlarge the Gravity Wells 2 X for planets and 3-4 X for stars.
3. Sometimes having to jump through 5+ stars to get where you want to go just sucks. It simply takes too long.
Possible Fixes
a) -Stars should be interconnected with EVERY other star on the map. This would mean that your ships can get to any other star without having to jump through a bunch of them in series.
*I understand that the developers are worried about 'Whack-a-Mole', but that would apply more to IF planets were open connected. Also, if you have Radar Lvl 2, you will see the approaching enemy ships a long ways off as they approach your star....PLENTY of time to react.
4. Many of us modders are hopping that SoaSE will be the Holy Grail of all empire building space games. While I already know that most of the tools I was looking forward to will be included in the game, I am hopping that some of the following be included as well.
a) -allow us to mod in a fog of war/sight range within gravity wells.
-allow us to make single gravity wells that holds a star, as well as several fully functional planets/asteroids (yes, all within the same star gravity well).
c) -allow us to specify a range on the Phase Space Inhibitors (as well as an antimatter cost).
