Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I am rather new to this game and so far I have enjoyed it very much! I like the ships, the gameplay, the idea of evolving your character around skillbooks etc. I have chosen to take the more safe route and play as a carebear, doing missions, trading, planetary interaction and salvaging.

My first space game was Homeworld, a true classic, it was beautiful and a surpisingly deep strategy wise. Even though it could be rather messy, it always managed to make you feel that you were in a real battle. Even though I am a carebear I really do not get this feeling. It is all just a lot of red dots with white boxes around them. This means that the missions soon become very tedious. Not only is the tactics rather simple, the graphics to illustrate the battle are boringly plain.

I have been giving this a lot of thought and I have had a hard time comming up with good solutions to these issues, but these are some small details that could help you improve the game.

• When missiles/projectiles hit a target, they will always hit the same point on the target. Those should be spread out all over the ships surface, thus taking damage from multiple ships look much more scary. Imagine how spectacular fighting a Titan would be!
• The gun stations should be spread out on a ship. It will look much better if it is obvious that you are firing several lasers at your opponent. The same goes with missilie launchers.
• Make missile launchers visible on a ship.
• Ships are in generel too dark and too small, they blend in with the background. It is war of the dots! Experiment with painting some ships more spotable colours.
• When ships get into low armor or structure it should be more obvious. Need explosions, fire, energy pulses, people floating in space.
• When ships get destroyed the explosion should be much bigger and violent (eventual shake the screens of nearby players). Possibly even pushing ships away from the blast. There could also be a lot more variation to these explosion depending on the ship/race/equipment etc.
• The white boxes around units should be editable, so you can either make them smaller/bigger more transparent/bold etc.
• Give players a choice in graphic settings to make the entire/all firbulae white or another colour that will increase visibility.

Most of my ideas are completely inspired by watching some fan videos of Homeworld. Go watch one of those videos, then go watch an Eve online movie. Compare and see for yourself if you agree that some of these points I made could improve the game graphically. I hope some of these ideas are new, otherwise I might just have wasted your time. My apologies!

Best regards Animorpheus Aven/Razormane