QoL Feedback/Pseudo-Review for Endless Sky

[Quotatron3000]

I've been playing endless sky for a while, I find it quite relaxing, and I wanted to 'sound-off' on possible Quality of Life (QoL) improvements. I was going to submit this as a single feature request on the GitHub bug page, but I understand requests should be one issue per item, and I didn't want to flood your GitHub requests page with loads of individual items akin to spam, so I've summarised here instead.

Please note this is probably a "hit and run" review thread, as I'm not worried if these proposals are accepted or rejected, I just wanted to 'review' endless sky (as the in-game 'author' ships keep suggesting : ) ). I've tried to group it by rough category.

Large fleets QoL

• Option to jettison/dispose illegal goods in the 'logbook' UI, both as an option for your own ship, and remote ships (including 'landed' ships), allowing you to prevent your AI escorts from 'accidentally' incurring fines
• Add option to prevent escorts from destroying disabled starships (have shots 'miss' the disabled starship). It is very frustrating to have carefully disabled a ship only for your escorts quad turrets to 'Brrrr' it into oblivion trying to shoot down a small fighter for the 20th time in a row.
• Prevent friendly AI from destroying ships you've disabled (friendly AI can still destroy their own ships they've disabled). It is frustrating to have carefully disabled a ship, only for an overpowered 'author' ship to come flying in and lasering it within the last two seconds of you about to board the ship, forcing unnecessary re-landings trying to 'despawn' "ally" ships.
• Option to prioritise displaying ships in other star systems in bottom left UI over local ships. You can select local ships visually, but you cannot select remote ships except via the bottom left UI, so they should gain priority.
• Add an 'eject all cargo' (including outfits) shortcut key for the flagship, unassigned by default, allowing players to quickly dump their loot into space (E.G. for pirates or for their fleet to pick up), without needing to keep using the 'logbook' menu. I often board ships, take their equipment, then dump it into my large fleet to collect, but the 'logbook' UI is very time consuming to use, especially if you're doing it 20+ times in a row.
• Optional directional hint UI for when your ship gets hidden in a messy large fleet of your own ships and you don't know which direction you're facing. I often lose track of my own ship in the 30+ starship fleet gathered around it and it can be hard to work out what direction I'm facing, so often I fly in the wrong direction, which can be problematic if you're trying to direct a fleet in battle.
• Ability to synchronise fleet speed with the slowest ship in the entire selected fleet. As brave as that Sparrow is, charging headfirst at the Korath battle cruiser to immediate demise, it maybe ought to wait for the lower heavy warships. Also help prevent warships from leaving defenseless freighters behind.
• Auto-mine feature for ships (with asteroid detection ability). If the NPC AI can auto-mine, escorts should be able to as well (I don't want to send other warships to accidentally target asteroids whilst I'm trying to fend off pirate attacks from the miners).

AI QoL

• Option to toggle 'run away' behaviour, where an escort with no shields flees hostile ships towards friendly ships, ignoring 'fire at' commands, instead of trying to suicidally kamikaze by flying at enemy ships. I've had to reload too many sessions because a suicidal Argosy, fighter craft, or beaten up capital ship with no shields wants to fly directly at a Korath when my 30+ slower capital ships are lagging behind.
• Make the default behaviour of captured ships to follow the flagship rather than travel freeform, so they don't run off straight into battle and get immediately destroyed. The number of captured fighter jets that whizz towards the first capital ship they see and blow up a second later is quite a reoccurring issue.
• Add toggle option that when escorts automatically detect the flagship is crippled, they immediately try to gather defensively around the flagship , and the fastest available escort immediately attempts repair, without needing to press 'G' or to manually click then 'hail' a ship first (which can cost vital seconds resulting in death).
• Add a 'gather together' command, causing all selected ships to cluster close together, rather than (usually) being spread out over a wide, random area requiring unfun micro-management to reposition. No, I don't like my slow freighter being 5 miles outside my capital ships' defensive circle.
• Maybe tweak the hostile AI to be a little less suicidal and more challenging? For some reason, small ships with definitely no chance of winning always want to fly headfirst at my large fleet of 30 ships. The end result is a small, exploding ship doing ice curling into the distance, which by the 30th occurrence feels more like swatting gnats than sensible behaviour.
• Hostile AI size/capability should scale with size of fleet. A better armed fleet should provoke a better armed enemy; fewer fighters, more warships, etc. Currently it seems heavily location based and randomised.

Landing QoL

• Add optional (can be disabled in options) warning dialogue prompt about illegal goods being onboard prior to landing, with the option to: cancel the landing, jettison the illegal goods, or proceed. The number of times I keep getting fined for landing on a friendly planet and having to reload because I forgot to sell off the nerve gas before I left the pirate star system is unbecoming (it's not possible to sell it off anywhere else without incurring the fine, forcing the travel reset).
• When entering a star system with a time critical mission, prioritise landing at the location with the least amount of time left first.
• When entering a star system with an unspecified landing point, default to the landing spot with the most features first (E.G outfitter, shipyard, etc), rather than randomised to prevent accidental landing at dud sites during routine ferrying. No, I don't want to keep landing at empty Mahoganybox in Ya Hai, please just let me land at Hai-home where all the good stuff is.
• Enable the ability to tell escorts to land (they become parked once they land). The crippled ship I just captured is just asking to be blown up whilst sitting around idle and I'd rather not micro-manage every single ship I capture trying to carefully hide it behind some other ships (especially if I'm capturing dozens of small, fragile, single-man ships). I don't want to be micro-managing an interstellar parking lot in space!

Performance Tweaks

• Missile interfering devices are currently a 'zero cost' item in that they thwart missiles simply by occupying space on a ship. Devices ought to consume power and/or produce heat as trade-off on the expense of missiles. It has always bothered me a radar jammer produces radar jamming using Zero-Point Energy. Perhaps reduce outfit space to offset power cost.
• Missiles should have a clear, distinct symbol representing what type of tracking they use, on the item itself (E.G. 'O' for optical, 'I' for infrared, 'R' for radar), so one doesn't have to open each type of missile description page individually to work out what type it is.
• Jump drives ought to consume one fuel for single, short hops, to avoid duplicate drive engines. Currently, optimal configuration is both a hyperdrive and a jump drive (taking up a whopping 40 outfit space - making it not viable for smaller ships), however the more advanced jump drive should also be able to perform a similar, single-hop, one-fuel jump function to avoid duplicate space usage; it can be slower than hyperdrive/scram for shorter hops if necessary.
• Currently landing on defunct, uninhabited planets saves the players progress, which can overwrite save data at a safer, earlier spaceport, and can accidentally leave them stranded in very dangerous sectors of space which players can find extremely frustrating to try to escape (especially given low fuel and if they've visited multiple uninhabited planets in quick succession unaware of this mechanic). This can result in a pseudo 'soft-lock' of the game where a player keeps getting wiped out by enemy forces before they can recharge fuel, as their last save is on an uninhabited planet. Uninhabited planet saves should be treated differently from inhabited planets and spaceports.
• CPU usage seems to increase when looking at items in the shipyard/outfitter compared to active battles in space, and it isn't clear to me why.
• Can the game drop more hints as to where I can pick up the trail of main quest storylines? I get I should 'spam the spaceport button', but my RNG seems really bad and I only ever seem to get generic filler messages or offers to smuggle illegal items, and given the sheer quantity of landable spaces, it is difficult to know where I should be concentrating my efforts (I don't want to spoiler my experience reading a Wiki). Can the probability of getting a main story quest increase (until it hits 100%) after X amount of filler messages/generic mission offers are seen? Or, if I'm on the wrong planet (I.E. one with no main story quests), can that 100% be converted into a direct hint of which planet I should be looking on? Perhaps even a special sub-mission whose destination is a main questline planet (maybe picked at random?).

Review
The most enjoyable aspects about Endless Sky is the ability to turn up in a random star system and see something completely unique or different there. For example, jumping into one star system, there's a black hole. Another, a powerful space alien. Another, an abandoned, mysterious space station. I think this sort of exploration variety is Endless Sky's strength which it isn't currently utilising to full. I find star systems that are generic or similar to previous ones to be less fun overall because they feel a bit 'same-y'.

The more moderately fun aspects are the ship customisations and novel technologies and tools. I don't think Endless Sky should seek to maintain a strict balance, given the main opponents are AI (AI aren't going to complain if it's unfair). Broken, overpowered, quirky alien weapon systems are fun, especially when you use it to beat a superior opponent.

The tedium for Endless Sky comes in the form of aspects of 'grinding' gameplay. For example, endlessly ferrying resources back and forth between planets to make trivial amounts of money, or trying to set up a starship capture loop (especially if you're trying to farm a piece of alien tech - Korath cooling systems, I'm looking at you - that you can't seem to buy anywhere). Capturing your first jump drive is exciting, as it is a novel technology initially, but once you've captured your 20th because you're painfully and slowly upgrading every ship in your fleet by capturing them one at a time, it becomes a tedious grind.

I have tried to use one ship solo to 'explore' to try to 'bypass' the grind, but many mid-tier areas are very noob unfriendly. For example, exploring Korath space will get even a heavy warship with decent Korath upgrades quickly massacred, and fuel often runs out quickly, making trips seem tedious and slow. Whilst I am aware fuel pods are a thing, if your ship is fully kitted out for battle, there's rarely room for barely one or two extra pods. Fuel pods taking up outfit space has always bothered me, as a pod implies it is external, rather than internal, however I don't know what would be the ideal balancing solution for this.

There also doesn't seem to be a natural, intuitive or obvious upgrade path. For example, once one captures a Hai shieldbeetle, there's almost no need for a Bacterin (and there seems to be no hints on how to acquire the government licence for one anyway). It is easier to capture a Hai shieldbeetle than jump through the hoops for a government licence for what seems to be a weaker Bacterin.

Outfitting and standardising ships in a fleet is also painfully tedious. Many outfitters with key components are on far, opposing ends, which coupled with the limited fuel and constant pit stops, making back-and-forth time consuming and unfun. For example, say you wanted to upgrade a ship to have Helium cooling with a Hai battery and an atomic engine, you have to go bottom left, middle-left, then to the middle-point of Hai space. If you haven't got a jump drive this will take even longer. I often find myself using one ship (which cannot make use of cargo space) with a jump drive to 'ferry' components for 20 other ships, and I don't feel like this is intended gameplay.

It is forced on the player, however, as to be able to get anywhere, you need a min-maxed ship/fleet given the hostilities and almost immediate destruction if you don't, which undercuts the exploration aspect.

Maybe this could be solved if a player had a dedicated, centralised spaceport that could 'replicate' (and then sell) obtained/captured technologies. So instead of having to travel back to Hai space every time, I can visit this dedicated manufacturer. Instead of having to manually board hundreds (yes, hundreds) of Korath ships to salvage a hodgesplodge of parts where half my fleet haven't got jump drives, and the other half lack Korath cooling, I can just buy these parts. Still feels kinda min-max-y.

Endless Sky also strongly incentivises 'save-scumming'. I imagine this may be by design, given the auto-saves, however it means there's almost no risk. If I lose a ship, I can just keep (re)loading until I don't, creating a risk-adverse environment. I've asked myself under what circumstances would the developers expect me to intentionally lose a ship? And I cannot think of any besides recently captured ships (whose value isn't high enough to warrant a reset, E.G. fighters).

What benefit would I be gaining in risking the loss of a ship when I can just re-load? Bearing in mind the time costs in salvaging and upgrading parts for a ship is the biggest factor for aversion, and not the money cost of the ship itself. Sure, my medium warship might be worth 3 million when resold, but it probably contained captured Korath tech, large Hai parts, and a jump drive too, that I can re-use in a bigger ship.

A minor annoyance are alien species who cannot be communicated with, with no explanation on how to 'progress' or develop with any of them (perhaps one mission is to acquire a universal translator, and you have to acquire language samples for each race to be able to understand them? Maybe this already exists. I wouldn't know as the questline is difficult to discover.)

I feel like Endless Sky has the potential to be really fun, and it is still finding its feet. Currently I use the grinding as a means to relax. I don't think the min-max grindset is what was intended.

Perhaps unique items (recoverable!) ought to be rewarded for completing missions (that cannot simply be captured)? Maybe the player ought receive something for playing the game 'fair' (actually letting their escorts die and not keep reloading saves)? Maybe the player ought to receive rewards for numbers of planets visited (and not simply a tally of how many they've visited)?

I don't quite know what it is missing, as it's hard to say, given 'fun' is a nebulous concept, and my definition of fun might not be the same as others.

I hope the developers don't take the criticisms personally. I like the game, I feel like there is more potential to it than 'space numbers go up'. Anyway, I'm going to go into hiding now from the angry mob now and go off to manually ferry some more Hai boulder reactors (please add a feature to be able to put purchased outfits into the cargo hold rather than on the ship - or if it already exists, make it more prominent on the UI, thanks).

[Zitchas]

You have a lot of comments there, and as one of those authors that pester you now and then, thank you for providing feedback!

I can't type as much as I would like due to being stuck on mobile right now, but I will comment that yes, there is a way to buy into cargo. You can do it via the checkbox on the bottom left. The right combination of those will but stuff into cargo as you wish.

[Koranir]

Optional directional hint UI for when your ship gets hidden in a messy large fleet of your own ships and you don't know which direction you're facing. I often lose track of my own ship in the 30+ starship fleet gathered around it and it can be hard to work out what direction I'm facing, so often I fly in the wrong direction, which can be problematic if you're trying to direct a fleet in battle.

The "Rotate flagship in HUD" setting (under Preferences>Settings>HUD) makes the little flagship in the health/shield meter face the same direction as your actual flagship, if that helps.

[mOctave]

* Add option to prevent escorts from destroying disabled starships (have shots 'miss' the disabled starship). It is very frustrating to have carefully disabled a ship only for your escorts quad turrets to 'Brrrr' it into oblivion trying to shoot down a small fighter for the 20th time in a row.

* Prevent friendly AI from destroying ships you've disabled (friendly AI can still destroy their own ships they've disabled). It is frustrating to have carefully disabled a ship, only for an overpowered 'author' ship to come flying in and lasering it within the last two seconds of you about to board the ship, forcing unnecessary re-landings trying to 'despawn' "ally" ships.

* Option to prioritise displaying ships in other star systems in bottom left UI over local ships. You can select local ships visually, but you cannot select remote ships except via the bottom left UI, so they should gain priority.

* Ability to synchronise fleet speed with the slowest ship in the entire selected fleet. As brave as that Sparrow is, charging headfirst at the Korath battle cruiser to immediate demise, it maybe ought to wait for the lower heavy warships. Also help prevent warships from leaving defenseless freighters behind.

* Add toggle option that when escorts automatically detect the flagship is crippled, they immediately try to gather defensively around the flagship , and the fastest available escort immediately attempts repair, without needing to press 'G' or to manually click then 'hail' a ship first (which can cost vital seconds resulting in death).

* Add a 'gather together' command, causing all selected ships to cluster close together, rather than (usually) being spread out over a wide, random area requiring unfun micro-management to reposition. No, I don't like my slow freighter being 5 miles outside my capital ships' defensive circle.

Now, where was that broken record... ah, there it is: "Endless Sky is not designed to be balanced around fleet play."

I'd welcome some of these changes. The remote ship priority would be a nice little tweak for if you have to deal with fleets, and getting your ships to slow down would also be helpful. Of course, the gather around flagship command might help with that, as might holding down J or using shift+J when jumping. Gather together also sounds cool, but I feel like it could be a headache when working with a large fleet. Escorts that save you could be a neat feature, but it would be nice to have a solid lore reason for them, too.

As for the others, they would certainly make capturing easier. But the capture grind is already OP. Having your quarry blown up by your escorts/an author ship/another enemy helps keep some level of skill, strategy, and focus in what would otherwise literally be "sit in a system for an hour then spam a button for fifteen seconds." See #8073, #3920, and other such issues.

* Add an 'eject all cargo' (including outfits) shortcut key for the flagship, unassigned by default, allowing players to quickly dump their loot into space (E.G. for pirates or for their fleet to pick up), without needing to keep using the 'logbook' menu. I often board ships, take their equipment, then dump it into my large fleet to collect, but the 'logbook' UI is very time consuming to use, especially if you're doing it 20+ times in a row.

I agree, this would be nice to have.

AI QoL

Yes to all of these, please. AI improvements are definitely a big thing that ES needs.

* Option to toggle 'run away' behaviour, where an escort with no shields flees hostile ships towards friendly ships, ignoring 'fire at' commands, instead of trying to suicidally kamikaze by flying at enemy ships. I've had to reload too many sessions because a suicidal Argosy, fighter craft, or beaten up capital ship with no shields wants to fly directly at a Korath when my 30+ slower capital ships are lagging behind.

* Maybe tweak the hostile AI to be a little less suicidal and more challenging? For some reason, small ships with definitely no chance of winning always want to fly headfirst at my large fleet of 30 ships. The end result is a small, exploding ship doing ice curling into the distance, which by the 30th occurrence feels more like swatting gnats than sensible behaviour.

See #3898

* Make the default behaviour of captured ships to follow the flagship rather than travel freeform, so they don't run off straight into battle and get immediately destroyed. The number of captured fighter jets that whizz towards the first capital ship they see and blow up a second later is quite a reoccurring issue.

See #7774

* Hostile AI size/capability should scale with size of fleet. A better armed fleet should provoke a better armed enemy; fewer fighters, more warships, etc. Currently it seems heavily location based and randomised.

I think raids do this? Other fleets, though, are meant to be just ships that you caught unawares. They aren't after you, you're after them. Maybe it would be good to have retribution fleets that go after you when you're totally OP and attacking a specific faction?

Landing QoL

* Add optional (can be disabled in options) warning dialogue prompt about illegal goods being onboard prior to landing, with the option to: cancel the landing, jettison the illegal goods, or proceed. The number of times I keep getting fined for landing on a friendly planet and having to reload because I forgot to sell off the nerve gas before I left the pirate star system is unbecoming (it's not possible to sell it off anywhere else without incurring the fine, forcing the travel reset).

It sounds to me like the fines are doing their job. That said, this could be a useful change.

* When entering a star system with a time critical mission, prioritise landing at the location with the least amount of time left first.

I 100% agree.

* Enable the ability to tell escorts to land (they become parked once they land). The crippled ship I just captured is just asking to be blown up whilst sitting around idle and I'd rather not micro-manage every single ship I capture trying to carefully hide it behind some other ships (especially if I'm capturing dozens of small, fragile, single-man ships). I don't want to be micro-managing an interstellar parking lot in space!

Good choice of words, since the interstellar parking lot that you can park your ships in isn't actually tied to any planet :). That said, I would support this change as well.

Performance Tweaks

* Missile interfering devices are currently a 'zero cost' item in that they thwart missiles simply by occupying space on a ship. Devices ought to consume power and/or produce heat as trade-off on the expense of missiles. It has always bothered me a radar jammer produces radar jamming using Zero-Point Energy. Perhaps reduce outfit space to offset power cost.

Radar jammers also suck, unless there's been recent changes I haven't caught. If we're making them use power, then they should also be much stronger.

* Missiles should have a clear, distinct symbol representing what type of tracking they use, on the item itself (E.G. 'O' for optical, 'I' for infrared, 'R' for radar), so one doesn't have to open each type of missile description page individually to work out what type it is.

So all the species in the galaxy are expected to agree on what kind of symbols to use on their missiles, now? I like the current way where you have to be exposed to something's flavour text in order to fully understand it.

* Jump drives ought to consume one fuel for single, short hops, to avoid duplicate drive engines. Currently, optimal configuration is both a hyperdrive and a jump drive (taking up a whopping 40 outfit space - making it not viable for smaller ships), however the more advanced jump drive should also be able to perform a similar, single-hop, one-fuel jump function to avoid duplicate space usage; it can be slower than hyperdrive/scram for shorter hops if necessary.

The point of the high fuel cost for a jump drive is that it isn't unequivocally better than a hyperdrive. You should have to use more fuel, because there's the potential for so much more capability. Lorewise, the function of the hyperdrive is so different than that of the jump drive that's it's amazing they even use the same kind of fuel. The way the jump drive works, it should maybe use a different amount of fuel depending on distance, but not on whether there's a hyperspace link or not.

* Can the game drop more hints as to where I can pick up the trail of main quest storylines? I get I should 'spam the spaceport button', but my RNG seems _really_ bad and I only ever seem to get generic filler messages or offers to smuggle illegal items, and given the sheer quantity of landable spaces, it is difficult to know where I should be concentrating my efforts (I don't want to spoiler my experience reading a Wiki). Can the probability of getting a main story quest increase (until it hits 100%) after X amount of filler messages/generic mission offers are seen? Or, if I'm on the wrong planet (I.E. one with no main story quests), can that 100% be converted into a direct hint of which planet I should be looking on? Perhaps even a special sub-mission whose destination is a main questline planet (maybe picked at random?).

The classic answer to this one is that eventually the entirety of human space will be blanketed with ways to start the FW/Republic/Syndicate/Pirate campaign. Of course, the Republic and Pirate campaigns are still very much works in progress, and I don't think the Syndicate campaign has been started yet. That means that for now you can start the main plot in about a quarter of human space. It would be great to provide pointers (and there are some small hints), but I don't see any big changes happening here anytime soon.

Review The most enjoyable aspects about Endless Sky is the ability to turn up in a random star system and see something completely unique or different there. For example, jumping into one star system, there's a black hole. Another, a powerful space alien. Another, an abandoned, mysterious space station. I think this sort of exploration variety is Endless Sky's strength which it isn't currently utilising to full. I find star systems that are generic or similar to previous ones to be less fun overall because they feel a bit 'same-y'.

The more moderately fun aspects are the ship customisations and novel technologies and tools. I don't think Endless Sky should seek to maintain a strict balance, given the main opponents are AI (AI aren't going to complain if it's unfair). Broken, overpowered, quirky alien weapon systems are fun, especially when you use it to beat a superior opponent.

The tedium for Endless Sky comes in the form of aspects of 'grinding' gameplay. For example, endlessly ferrying resources back and forth between planets to make trivial amounts of money, or trying to set up a starship capture loop (especially if you're trying to farm a piece of alien tech - Korath cooling systems, I'm looking at you - that you can't seem to buy anywhere). Capturing your first jump drive is exciting, as it is a novel technology initially, but once you've captured your 20th because you're painfully and slowly upgrading every ship in your fleet by capturing them one at a time, it becomes a tedious grind.

I have tried to use one ship solo to 'explore' to try to 'bypass' the grind, but many mid-tier areas are very noob unfriendly. For example, exploring Korath space will get even a heavy warship with decent Korath upgrades quickly massacred, and fuel often runs out quickly, making trips seem tedious and slow. Whilst I am aware fuel pods are a thing, if your ship is fully kitted out for battle, there's rarely room for barely one or two extra pods. Fuel pods taking up outfit space has always bothered me, as a pod implies it is external, rather than internal, however I don't know what would be the ideal balancing solution for this.

I agree with this; it's why I spend far more time doing content creation for ES than I do actually playing the game.

There also doesn't seem to be a natural, intuitive or obvious upgrade path. For example, once one captures a Hai shieldbeetle, there's almost no need for a Bacterin (and there seems to be no hints on how to acquire the government licence for one anyway). It is easier to capture a Hai shieldbeetle than jump through the hoops for a government licence for what seems to be a weaker Bacterin.

The lack of an obvious upgrade path is intentional. It is designed to make you branch out and enjoy the game rather than grinding for the perfect ship.

That said, the Bactrian is almost absurdly hard to obtain, which has been discussed before in #7826, along with other issues. I personally find that the plot to get the Bactrian is more fun than having the ship, and that your brand-new City Ship license is a nice trophy.

I won't offer spoilers, but keep doing missions in human space for long enough (and don't decline anything that isn't obviously an illegal cargo mission) and you should get it eventually.

Outfitting and standardising ships in a fleet is also painfully tedious. Many outfitters with key components are on far, opposing ends, which coupled with the limited fuel and constant pit stops, making back-and-forth time consuming and unfun. For example, say you wanted to upgrade a ship to have Helium cooling with a Hai battery and an atomic engine, you have to go bottom left, middle-left, then to the middle-point of Hai space. If you haven't got a jump drive this will take even longer. I often find myself using one ship (which cannot make use of cargo space) with a jump drive to 'ferry' components for 20 other ships, and I don't feel like this is intended gameplay.

It is forced on the player, however, as to be able to get anywhere, you need a min-maxed ship/fleet given the hostilities and almost immediate destruction if you don't, which undercuts the exploration aspect.

Maybe this could be solved if a player had a dedicated, centralised spaceport that could 'replicate' (and then sell) obtained/captured technologies. So instead of having to travel back to Hai space every time, I can visit this dedicated manufacturer. Instead of having to manually board hundreds (yes, hundreds) of Korath ships to salvage a hodgesplodge of parts where half my fleet haven't got jump drives, and the other half lack Korath cooling, I can just buy these parts. Still feels kinda min-max-y.

I believe there are several plugins that allow you to do this. You can also store captured outfits on a planet for later.

Endless Sky also strongly incentivises 'save-scumming'. I imagine this may be by design, given the auto-saves, however it means there's almost no risk. If I lose a ship, I can just keep (re)loading until I don't, creating a risk-adverse environment. I've asked myself under what circumstances would the developers expect me to intentionally lose a ship? And I cannot think of any besides recently captured ships (whose value isn't high enough to warrant a reset, E.G. fighters).

What benefit would I be gaining in risking the loss of a ship when I can just re-load? Bearing in mind the time costs in salvaging and upgrading parts for a ship is the biggest factor for aversion, and not the money cost of the ship itself. Sure, my medium warship might be worth 3 million when resold, but it probably contained captured Korath tech, large Hai parts, and a jump drive too, that I can re-use in a bigger ship.

A minor annoyance are alien species who cannot be communicated with, with no explanation on how to 'progress' or develop with any of them (perhaps one mission is to acquire a universal translator, and you have to acquire language samples for each race to be able to understand them? Maybe this already exists. I wouldn't know as the questline is difficult to discover.)

I feel like Endless Sky has the potential to be really fun, and it is still finding its feet. Currently I use the grinding as a means to relax. I don't think the min-max grindset is what was intended.

It wasn't. It is true that the storylines are often hard to discover, but they might be easier to find if you aren't focused on grinding.

Perhaps unique items (recoverable!) ought to be rewarded for completing missions (that cannot simply be captured)? Maybe the player ought receive something for playing the game 'fair' (actually letting their escorts die and not keep reloading saves)? Maybe the player ought to receive rewards for numbers of planets visited (and not simply a tally of how many they've visited)?

There are one or two Easter eggs you can pick up for visiting specific planets, etc., but it would be nice to have some of the other rewards you mentioned.

I don't quite know what it is missing, as it's hard to say, given 'fun' is a nebulous concept, and my definition of fun might not be the same as others.

I hope the developers don't take the criticisms personally. I like the game, I feel like there is more potential to it than 'space numbers go up'. Anyway, I'm going to go into hiding now from the angry mob now and go off to manually ferry some more Hai boulder reactors (please add a feature to be able to put purchased outfits into the cargo hold rather than on the ship - or if it already exists, make it more prominent on the UI, thanks).

Said feature does already exist. Uncheck the option to "show outfits in cargo" and you can by outfits to put into your cargo. It's perfectly logical, and by no means something that shouldn't have been reworked several years ago (sarcasm).

[Hurleveur]

There's a PR to allow holding fire on your escorts, and about exploration you indeed havent found all species yet, and/or have not done a specific path of the main campaign.
Eating a fine or two should be smth that happens, ofc you dont willingly land to get it haha its just part of the cost of those outfits.

Yes as a noob you're a bit forced towards big fleet and I dont like it, but one can disengage very easily from any situation with the right outfit/ship.

[xX-Dillinger-Xx]

I agree with a lot of what was said. This person seems very inciteful. I hope all devs read this, then re-read it, and pay attention to what is being said. I feel these view points represent what most, if not all, new players feel.

I think the developers have designed the game around they way they think we should play it, which is logical. However, the problem is that they give players so much free will, very few actually play it as intended. Example: "Endless Sky is not designed to be balanced around fleet play." but I bet almost every new player thinks they need to, and almost always do, acquire a huge fleet. It isn't until you replay, that you start to figure out that solo or even tiny fleet is fun. Unlike, loads of other games there is very little guidance from the Developers in game, and what guidance there is very easily missed. Yes, there are lots of documents scattered around the net, that describe the canon and lore of ES, but there should be more info in game. Maybe, James can teach us a few more things before he leaves. Or maybe we could go back and see him if we need more guidance. He's just retired, not dead.
James: "Remember kid your just a ship captain, maybe one day in the far distant future you can become a fleet admiral."

[xX-Dillinger-Xx]

Something else comes to mind. I get the whole concept of needing a vision for the game. People rarely accomplish anything without a plan.

There seems to be a recurring theme revolving around balance. Balance is great and necessary in almost every game made. The issue here is that because players have so much free will, even to the point of editing files and creating "god mode" ships, that true balance, as intended by the devs, very quickly becomes skewed. As stated, the game is balanced based on how devs envision the game should be played. I want to point out that there is a different kind of balance that needs to be considered. It's the balance between what is intended and what happens in reality. Some players choose to play as intended (solo ship) , others prefer a scorched earth, god mode approach. But focusing balance based solely on one playing style create issues, and IMO doesn't quite fit in with the impressive amount of free will a player has in this game. I'm really not sure how to address what I'm talking about, but I'm sure others will have ideas.

[Zitchas]

Theoretically, we aim to balance around solo-ship players; with the ability to have a fleet being a built-in balance mechanism. As in, if a battle is too hard, they can bring as many escorts as they feel they need in order to have a shot at winning the battle. At least, that's the theory. Can be harder to do for some battles than for others.

[yafflehk]

If it's not designed around fleet play then fleets should be rare in the wild, difficult to acquire or capped at a certain number? If you can only own a certain number of ships above a certain size then having fighters might make more sense, or maybe it's total tonnage? One Bactrian or three/four Firebirds? The game can be limited to get the behavior that the designers think would be most rewarding.

[bene-dictator]

A fleet cap would be an adequate solution (and would solve other problems too, like how overpowered ship capture is), but it removes a freedom many players have taken for granted, and even if the previous wasn't the case the way that it would be implemented would be up to intense debate.

That's not to say it couldn't happen, but when it comes to a game thorough testing is required before a change can be considered to be implemented, and open source games should theoretically be easier to test, but it doesn't work that way all the time.

[Hurleveur]

If we're to have a cap, it should be soft cap, not a hard cap.

[xX-Dillinger-Xx]

@bene-dictator Or just relax a little on the focus of balancing around solo play. Allow a few changes that help support fleet play. Ultimately the player will choose the options that suit there play style best. You know a lot of good ideas that would support fleet style have been shut down because they don't fit the image. But lets be honest, there are far too many players that want a little fleet support to keep ignoring it.

[xX-Dillinger-Xx]

I agree with what you are saying. I wasn't suggesting changing anything at the moment. I was just trying to suggest that a more relaxed attitude towards none conforming ideas wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Flat out no's to non conforming ideas can be discouraging to people wanting to submit ideas. As I mentioned before, this place can be a little intimating. You don't want people to develop the " I would suggest it, but I already know the answer" attitude. Good ideas that don't make sense today might make more sense in the future and should be archived for later consideration. I think people would appreciate "not today, but maybe someday" over "no, not ever". IMO No reasonable idea should be 100% off the table and should be afforded a little discussion.

BTW, this was not directed at you Hurleveur , but I think you know that. It's directed at all the Dev's in a more general way, no one person.

[xX-Dillinger-Xx]

Oh something else.

promoting fleet play just removes the thinking aspect of the game and its engagements.

I don't think fleet play should be promoted either, but it should be acknowledged and supported. Like I said, players will use what ever play style they want anyway, supported or not. If they want to think and be engaged they'll choose solo, if they don't that's up to them.

[bene-dictator]

I think people would appreciate "not today, but maybe someday" over "no, not ever". IMO No reasonable idea should be 100% off the table and should be afforded a little discussion.

I did mention the fact that it wasn't off the table – but the idea of fleet caps would have to have been already well developed and argued for before it gets into the PR stage; fleet caps are notoriously controversial. Ultimately, that's the development culture of the game at fault (and to some degree the way that the developers communicate their thoughts to the reviewers, contributors, and community at large – it could be better, but at the moment it does feel like they have said "no" more often than they have said "yes" recently.)

I have not talked about balancing gameplay around a solo ship myself. Probably that line is getting to the point that it's being used to defend things outside of its scope, and we should actually do something about it instead of repeating it.

[Hecter94]

just relax a little on the focus of balancing around solo play. Allow a few changes that help support fleet play.

No change happens in isolation. When things are turned down, it's not merely due to a lack of desire to improve the game; it's about considering all factors and determining whether the change is worthwhile.
This comes down to considering a couple of things.

• Maintenance

Remember that every change that is made needs to be maintained permanently. This means that the increased maintenance burden that comes with a change needs to be justified. It's easy to justify this burden if the change enhances the intended experience, but it's much harder if the change only exists to support plugins or alternative playstyles.

• Scope

Defining and adhering to a clear scope for any project is crucial. Understanding the project's scope is essential to prevent it from exceeding our capabilities. Feature creep or scope bloat is a common problem that leads to the failure of many projects. Therefore, we must be aware of it and take action to prevent it if we want Endless Sky to remain successful for the next decade.

• Vision

Similarly, we need to determine the type of game we want Endless Sky to become. As a community-driven project, various individuals have different expectations and preferences towards Endless Sky. However, these desires often contradict each other, making it impossible to cater to everyone's needs. Therefore, we must establish a clear vision for the game. This includes defining its future outlook, the kind of experience it should deliver, the type of gameplay it should support, and what it should not.

If a change ever gets turned down, it's usually because it ran against one of these guidelines. Either it introduced too much of a maintenance burden without improving the intended experience enough, exceeded the project's scope, or conflicted with the project's vision.

Flat out no's to non conforming ideas can be discouraging to people wanting to submit ideas.

If a proposed change conflicts with any of the three criteria I mentioned, it will be rejected. In such cases, the maintainers must communicate that the change will not be accepted. Saying "no" is better than giving the impression that the change may be accepted when it won't, as it can lead to people investing a lot of time and effort into the change only to find out later that it was never going to be accepted no matter how much time they invested into it.

I don't think fleet play should be promoted either, but it should be acknowledged and supported. Like I said, players will use what ever play style they want anyway, supported or not. If they want to think and be engaged they'll choose solo, if they don't that's up to them.

We will always support fleet play. It's not like we'll ever put a hard limitation on it at the engine level. However, it may be moved to a difficulty setting or an optional feature in the future.

It's important to remember that any alternative playstyle in a game may not be as refined as the intended playstyle. Most of the game's development time, effort, and energy is dedicated to refining the intended experience. Additionally, alternative playstyles may not be properly balanced since the game is designed to be balanced around the intended experience of a single ship or a few escorts.

So, we have to define our intended experience, work to polish it, and then clearly communicate it.
"Clearly communicate" here can be literal, but it can also mean communicating via mechanics, which is primarily what we need to focus on improving at this stage.

[xX-Dillinger-Xx]

"Clearly communicate" being the key.
I would expect a "declined" response to be something along the lines of "Thanks for taking the time to submit your idea, but unfortunately, at this time, your idea isn't suitable for Endless Sky for the following reasons. (reasons listed) If in the future things change we may revisit your idea, but for now it's a no."
This insinuates that someone took the time to read it and analyze it before declining it. A little explanation helps people understand and except the reasons their idea was declined. It also helps them feel like their view points and opinions matter. But, it can't be a standardized copy and paste reply. People will pick up on that. I do see some Devs already take the time, however some do not.
I do see ideas get shot down without any discussion, mainly because the submitter didn't clearly explain what they where thinking. Sometimes all they need is a little help clarifying and defining their idea. I just had that exact thing happen to me.

I know Devs are super busy and devote a lot of their spare time into this game, and for that I thank-you. I can also understand patience running a little thin at times, but the Devs represent Endless Sky and IMO should try to remain professional at all times. I'm not trying to offend anyone. Far from it. I'm just offering some feedback and advice. Thanks for taking the time to talk.