Small Fixes

Okay, I'm aware there may be more than a hint of sour grapes here but: the Random Number Generator is driving me nuts.

I just played a game on Normal difficulty in which EVERY SINGLE SHIP I ran across had either shield repair, hull repair, or both- some had shield repair, hull repair, AND repair drones. How enjoyable is spending five minutes flying around in tiny circles with your nose pressed directly against the ship so that your missiles will actually hit, just to have a chance of actually damaging your enemy faster than it (or, heaven help you, it's comrades) can repair itself?!

And none of these ships actually *produces* the items it's been using so flagrantly when finally destroyed... And this is on the FIRST STAGE, when I'm still struggling along with the human weapons and whatever modest improvements I can afford to make in them.

So, a couple of small suggestions in the name of fairness.

One: The likelihood of a destroyed ship spawning a weapon pick-up should *increase* based on the value of the weapons it's using. There should be a reward commensurate with the amount of risk and effort the player is undertaking in sticking through a fight. To barely fight off multiple ships with 200-point damage weapons in the first stage, ending with only a shred of hull left, and not even receive enough in return to pay for the repairs just isn't enjoyable.

Two: Repair beams firing on fighters/drones should be free. Replacing the ships if they're destroyed is free; why should it cost more to repair them than to replace them? It's annoying to have to manually shuffle weapons or dock one's mini-ships just so auto-firing doesn't eat up all the profits.

And three, noting full well that I may be whining a bit on this one: The enemy ships can fire their repair weapons until the sun goes down because they don't have to pay for them. Especially in fights where multiple ships have these weapons, this creates a ridiculous imbalance. It wouldn't be necessary to have every enemy ship keep track of the amount of scrap they have to fix this, or even to have a common pool of scrap for all enemies in the sector; just only allow them to fire those weapons for the first 10 to 30 seconds of the engagement (this could even be adjusted depending on the player's selected difficulty.)

For all my complaining, I want to say that I've really enjoyed the game. I just had several games in a row that had me tearing my hair out in frustration.