Dear commander
I have a few reports about my personal experience of the game to give
After the update I have on more than one occasion found that the amount of upgrade points I get compared to scrap feels unbalanced completely and makes the value of just buying a small gunship better than to actually care for your ally fleet
I also often feel that if you don't go for drones/fighters/bombers you can't reach further than section 3 often because if you take your time the super weapons gets enabled for all alien races which most times means instant death for your ship unless you have a wall of canon fodder consisting of disposable ships
Then I have a single bug to report I recently almost cleared out a sector and was told to murder a few ships I accepted only to find out that one of the 3 ships I had to destroy is a mercenary/friendly ship and I recall not being able to kill them so yeah...
to answer your question about what difficulty I mostly play on is actually either hard or easy depending on how much pain I want to experience since I want to state that now that the new races have been added I feel like the old weapons can't fully compensate for how the aliens become stronger and to mention my previous statement I also feel like the lack of upgrade points isn't being dropped enough makes you hit a wall once the aliens get their strong weapons and like the flak canon and photon canon but then if you survive that the game just becomes a cakewalk and once you acquire the super weapons (I'm gonna be honest the only one worth using is the Death ray)
now onto my personal opinion on the balancing of weapons
when you start most of the time I buy a normal canon and a energy canon to be able to take down shields and ships which is fine but when it comes to point defense turrets I often find that there is no reason to buy anything but the bolter because it's accurate enough and only take 10 upgrade points to take down a rocket cannon's rocket but when I buy the gatling point defense I feel like it's worthless because of it's lack of accuracy
I know the nuke is a powerful weapon but thats actually only if it hits... when I tried to use one I had to have at least 4 or maybe 5 to get just one through enemy defenses... the nuke's health is too little to survive alien point defenses and drones making it far from cost efficient compared to buying a ton of canons and just upgrading them enough to rain death on the alien ships
I think the priority of the repair beam should be revisited and go for your own and friendly ships before drones because I have lost a few ally ships because my repair beams (I had 2) wanted to repair my drones and not my actual ships
Another bug I just experienced today while I'm writing this... I just killed a nemesis and he ejects into his escape pod I sadly didn't kill him before he jumped to hyperspace but he apparently jumped to the same sector so when I jumped away and then back again he was still there but he keept jumping away but to the same sector so I couldn't kill him
about a few visual bugs
when a ship jumps from your sector and you have targeted it if you follow it the visual of you targeting the ship is still active but the actual target priority doesn't continue and has to be reapplied
I have a few times experienced a visual bug with the ship select where if you aren't in high enough level you can't see the stats of the ship and I have no idea what causes it
Rebalancing the liberator
I often find that the liberator isn't good enough to buy because it might have the hard points for weapons but it's health still makes it weak and unable to take a beating like the raven but it's 1 hangar bay doesn't make it a appealing carrier so it only becomes a long range rocket dispenser
onto my personal suggestions for things I would like to be added to the game (many of this might be a little too much and it's just suggestions but this would just make a epic game even more epic)
/I believe it's been established that drones can't jump to hyper space because of the A.I. but when I jump my drones can without a problem I would love for a visual addition of the hyperspace jump that the drones seek safety in your hangar bay and they launch from the hangar bay when you arrive which can make it look way more awesome (60% of the reasons why I love the game is because the space battles is visually epic)
/Like I mentioned with the balancing of the upgrade points I would like to suggest that the amount you get isn't changed but instead it would be possible to buy them at battle stations for a reasonable amount of scrap to balance out the value of actually upgrading ally ships instead of just buying a new one and give it a new set of weapons every time one dies
/I know it's a little late to add but but it would be simply marvelous if your ships would come with a custom name or being able to name your ships because it feels more like class name than personal name for the ship (like the Ohio class submarine) the names could be added from the kickstarters or maybe patreon members?
/it feels like the flak canon and vulcan turret should be able to target missiles and that in the customization screen for your ships set priority for each individual gun so that flak canons focus drones even while in range of an enemy ship
/often I feel the targeting range and angle of my point defense is a little vague and I would like to be able to see the weak spots of my ships defenses so I knew where to angle my ship in the early game (this stops being a problem once I'm in the mid to lategame but it's often confusing me how effective the targeting angle of my point defense nodes are)
/The inclusion of custom fleets since I have seen in the spoilers it's possible to have more than the original 3 ships I would love that it would be limited a little so just like point defense nodes and heavy weapons node there will be a limit on heavier ships and then small escort ships I.E. 1 capital ship 2 big ships (liberator/valhalla/Achilles) 4 or 5 light escort ships (Guardian/Raven/Nightengale) so it could be more balanced
/the last major thing I would love to see in the game is a bigger meaning to the level system so the game feels even more like a rogue light than it already is improving replayability like making your more proficient at fleet movement improving speed or recharge of the hyperdrive while in combat and maybe increase the amount of scrap you can get from selling weapons or doing missions and fleet command to be in better control of the concept I presented just before
Final stop
no matter what I say about how the game is balanced right now it's still EPIC! I love how it works and how the combat feels flying through space with my armada/fleet if ships defending the human race from dangerous aliens I'm sad that I didn't know about the game back when the kickstarter was active because I would have backed it all the way I can't wait for the release for pc and the beta test for mobile is only making me want more because it's the first game I have ever played that is arcade enough to be epic but detailed enough to have potential I love your work and even if my suggestions isn't gonna be added I'm still gonna love the game thank you for reading
-Jonesso
