First of all, English is not my native language, so please do ask for more explanation if you do not understand. I will try to explain more carefully.
* One thing, that frustrated me a lot, was that the game ended. And even if you still choose to keep on playing after killing the last dominator boss, you started losing points.
I wish this game to be infinite, live as long as you want and still evolve. Currently it's like in some Simcity game - hit year 2050 and game looses all meaning.
Some ideas from Galactic Civ could be used to achieve this. But I still made a good choice, when I picked SR2 insead of GC from store.
* I loved the RTS mini-games, but I wish there was more to it.
Build a base, upgrade stuff, better defenses, some Intelligence/hack stuff to screw with opponent and their factories. Add some mysterious technology to help you win - alien structures, where you have to "guess what each button with weird symbols do" to start producing super machines. Just like in some other modern RTS game, AoE, Generals ZH, SC2.
And after you win a RTS game, leave the base there to defend the planet or something like that and in future you could reuse it.
So much potential was put in designing the landscape, beautiful art, but sadly not much to do there except to get your butt kicked.
* I didn't like the logic of space ship hull size - bigger hull = bigger size on screen - made no sense at all - and all of a sudden you found yourself in a ship built for giants, where steering wheel was 10 meters and each button 1 meter wide.
With each new hull size, the ship should have a new look, that's still logical.
* One thing that also didn't make any sense to me, was, why am I allowed to buy any ship, while other rangers just keep buying ranger ships built by their race? Why am I so special? Why aren't others allowed to get themselves the best ship instead of restricting themselves?
Anybody should be able to buy anything, but still do the job, just in a bit more "special way".
* If game would be infinite and always evolving... continuing with ships by expanding the idea of bigger hull = new look idea:
How about allowing to buy super expensive gigantic space ships just as big as that? "Space carriers" or something like that, and many variants of them. Always limited speed to 300, some exceptions may apply, but more room for weapons and for other equipment. Probably need to forbid using of artifacts on that one due to huge ship size or just cut their effect to quarter or even more slots for them.
* I wish I was able to be inside a dominator ship. For e.g. buy a dominator ship from some "Pirate-Scientists Union" base. The ship should be without any limits, the extra equipment could be bought separately and just like originally should never deteriorate until breaking, but it can loose effectiveness and of course, unlimited ammo for missile launcher type weapons. And since it resembles a real dominator, you shall be treated as a dominator wherever you go, except of course, by those, who know that you definitely aren't one.
Since you had an idea to make a separate Pirate life, this could be exclusively just in that plot.
* Talking about missile launchers, why do dominators have infinite missiles?
Add a special device to dominators: "This device collects space trash and forges them into missiles" or something more scientific or complicated. Make that device also purchasable, at later part of the game, for yourself, at a high price of course. Or maybe even multiple parts need to be gathered for this on-board missile factory?
* The mysterious unexplained black holes/jump points...
Add some guest about revealing, what are those mysterious spaceships in there. Also a possibility to obtain one for yourself. Why are they so strong even if they only have ancient trash on board? Maybe a ship specialty? Should definitely be a ship specialty.
One idea is to give regular weapon appearance in that hyperspace for non-black hole spaceships and only that "black hole ship" specialty would turn those weapons into something else and much stronger, as they are currently and that effect should also work outside the black hole.
While doing the Pirate life, you could also add the possibility to "join" the black hole gang to ambush others who might visit it.
* Which brings me to another question.. Why am I again the only one able to do that? Make at least rangers brave enough to go harvesting for stuff from black holes.
* Also, why only I buy satellites to explore uninhabited planets for abandoned stuff?
* I wish that Blazer also had it's own system, like Terron, where it lives, and had a bigger, factory, space station, immovable, that produces current Blazer ship and reproduces a new one, if current gets destroyed. Blazer ship should be 2x weaker to be fair.
And, to kill that station, you can land on it and do a FPS like mini-game instead, similar to Dead Space game. Unveiling what went wrong, what infected the systems and then fight the cool looking Blazer itself..
Well, if FPS seems impossible, then at least make a RTS, big map, where Blazer appears as a regular, "hero" robot, limited to defend the base and killing it will end the Blazer factory.
* The text based missions should not be mandatory, like in SR1 and should have more visuals, like in a proper Visual Novel. For e.g. don't use letters and other symbols to draw a map, make a real map instead with proper markings!
I also wish, that somebody, outside of the text mission, could give me hints on, how to complete a specific text mission. I really hated the random effects that occurred on some choices. Sometimes you got these parameters when you started and sometimes you got other parameters, but most of the time, they were against you.
* Radar and logic.
I sometimes get "chased off the map screen"... Why is my, even my multibillion cr radar limited to only show the current solar system? Is the sun some kind of an amplifier? Is that game about another parallel universe, where (space?) radars went wrong, really wrong and always require a sun to be near to work properly?
Here's an idea, split radars to 3 tiers:
Tier 1 - current radar programming, tier 2 - radars that start centering on you if you get too far from the solar system, but will still cease working at some distance. And finally, tier 3 radars, which will center on you and never stop working.
* Hyperjump spots, minimap and logic ...and engines.
Okay, I can bend my mind to think that maybe it is the sun, that requires me to be in the boundaries of the minimap to take a jump (actually you should explain that in game, e.g. engine related topic). But why a square? And the same for all systems? How about we turn the minimap to a circle instead and turning the solar system's hyper jump spots from square formation into a circle?
Yet another equipment requiring for a sun: engine - let's divide them into tiers too:
tier 1 - needs to be close to the sun, tier 2 - the minimap is the limit, tier 3 - no limit.
* Weapons space time logic.
It takes me 1 day to shoot from all of my 5 guns? Yet another parallel universe "went wrong in evolution" thing, where all weapons always take 1 day to shoot and hit its target (except missiles ofc, which may take weeks to get somewhere)?
Well, plausible for alternate reality, but it's not realistic to have a "low tier" weapon, that shoots a beam a whole day! How many movies do you know, where space battles take several weeks or months, just because everybody has to wait until their "always big and heavy, but low cost weapons" shoot? I really don't like to bend my mind to think, that that one beam was actually 100 shots and even though the ship visually stood still and could fly at 1200mph, it actually did a lot of maneuverings to evade some shots defined by the pilot's skill.
To fix this, add more HP to ships and divide the gun's shooting ratio. For e.g. one gun will shoot several times at once. With some better tier weapons you could pick several targets for one gun ("- better targeting mechanism").
* Space stations. So big, so weak. They could have something more. And less.
First, let's at least give more guns to that Military base! And a bit more to Pirate base.
Military base has visually some kind of a weapon moving on it, what is it? Well, whatever it is, let's make it special! Something really heavy, strong, irreplaceable, but repairable and with better durability. Doesn't have to appear in weapons section, but is always there and will shoot and do a lot of damage, even if heavily damaged, but will not break.
SR2 - Reboot Add-on allowed to buy access to modify space station's equipment.
But I don't understand, does a space station even have any use of a scanner? A top notch engine, a fuel tank or a radar? Why do we even have access to edit those equipment slots?
* Grippers. Mine's more expensive, so I should win the mini-battle of gripping!
No seriously - higher tier gripper = higher success % of snatching space junk from sb else. You could even turn this to a third attribute of gripper.
In Pirate bases they should sell a special micromodule, that will speed up the gripping process and also increase that %.
* Space objects, without that disease.
There's a disease in SR2 that makes you hallucinate that there are some cool looking space objects in space. Why can't we have those by default? Space is so boring without that "disease".
* Weapons idea..
What's the most destructive thing in whole SR? A high velocity space rock of course! And a mine.
At later parts of the game, those rocks get bigger and meaner. Sometimes, even a 1-hit-KO may occur with you. I like it.
The "Pirate-Scientists Union" base could develop a weapon just like that (for a special "suicide" mission, but if you survive, you can keep the weapon)! It will require minerals as ammo and it will require 3 weapon slots for itself. But it will throw "anonymous" meteors at target. The rock throw ratio in a day, rock size and rock's flight speed will increase if you upgrade the thrower. Bigger thrower will also require a ship with bigger hull size.
There's also another thing you could buy from a Pirate base or "Pirate-Scientists Union" base: a prototype of a mine laying ship and then the real deal for 4x more money! The prototype will have everything disabled on it, except the engine and fuel tank and the ability to lay about 20 mines or so. And then the real ship will have it all enabled, but only 2 weapon slots, since 3 are taken by the mine layer and mine containers. It will be a big ship. The mine laying "gun" can be reloaded, just like a missile thrower, for cheap in any pirate related station, and can hold about 60 mines, but mines will be 3-4x weaker at first. After series of upgrading, the mines will have magnetic sensory and possibly even a camouflage, but definitely remote detonation. Magnetic - if a ship passes by, the mine will start to follow it and go boom and the faster the ship the bigger the "drag" towards the ship. Mines should be able to be upgraded to have an advanced anti-missile defense that will redirect the rocket/torpedo away or to another target or even back to attacker. If redirecting at another target, the mine could be programmed to change the source identity to anonymous or to the real owner, so if the target gets hit, then it will think that the attacker of the mine attacked it. The mine should be able to be upgraded to have higher endurance to any attack, so others could not be able to get rid of it too fast and it should also have a "safe" self-destruct, if unwanted at that location. Those special mines should not be allowed to be picked up by anyone and only by destroying or "safe" self-destruct. If under camo, it would be a nice idea to allow it to be disabled temporary or permanently until next time you actually need it at that place. Removing or forging mine's owner identity should also be an option.
* About the advanced anti-missile defense - that should be sold (or given as a special prize) as a micromodule for force shield generator in both Scientific and Pirate bases. Or a separate device or an upgrade option for either hull or force shield gen. But only the Pirate base will give you the one with identity forging.
* Races should be more different from each other, rather than just color and equipment durability. They should have some new specialties. They probably have something already, but those are so minor, I don't even notice them. For e.g. give Maloqs special, seriously big guns or smthn or weapon dmg bonus.. Give Faeyans something about intelligence, like repair equipment to 20% and artifacts to 10%, without needing to land on a repair capable place.
* Show hull, equipment damage indicators on screen, without me having to open up ship menu to check things out myself.
* Sun's burn ratio should be increased. The more you stay in fire, the more it will start burning you. Start selling a special hull cooling technology at later part of the game, that will decrease the heat or better versions of it even to nullify Sun's burn and even decrease dmg taken from heat based weapons.
* Probably impossible to achieve currently: Space sim, like in FreeSpace or as shown in SR2's intro video, but without the technicality to shoot specific targets of the ship to disable it etc. It would be really fun to fly around just like that. Either hunt transports or run from pirates and hide in meteor clouds.
* Something I just remembered seeing in that intro video: what the hell did that Peleng throw at that Ranger to evade that powerful attack? That should be visually shown too. The higher the defense skill, the more capsules will be thrown or whatever self-defense there might be. The dead Peleng also held a timed bomb. Why don't we have that? That could be exclusive to pirates.
* System requirements, bugs, forced destructive RTM...
Since Reboot Add-on came out, the new RTS maps crashed a lot. I have a pretty decent machine, so they are your bugs. If you want a wider market, bigger audience, more income, please do not make the game to be such a ***** about end-user's PC.
And I still remember what your favourite RTM StarForce did with my 3 PCs. Most of StarForce protected games never got popular, and even I got SR2 with only 9$. When I thought I just got lucky, the real financial damage came after I installed that SF virus, which I could never remove, even with official SF remover. Compare yourself with GalCiv game and their success. Rattle your brains, thinking hard, how did they succeed. And of course, if SF kills my computer, I will hate you, I already hate SF and I won't have a working PC to play any of your other games, meaning I will hate you even more = no more money income for you. Sb may even sue you to get money for a new PC and since SR3 will be resource demanding, it will require a very expensive PC = even bigger jackpots in court.
I really hope you learned from your mistakes.
Well, those are just few thoughts of mine. You may or may not like them, but remember, that you are making the game for other people, not for yourself. We bring in the money, if you even want any.
If you like my ideas or "my way", let me know and I can write few billion more or explain current ones in more detail.
