So games all over are starting to remove random crates because, spoiler alert, NOBODY LIKES OR WANTS THEM AS A PRIMARY SOURCE FOR NECESSARY ITEMS.
So I advise that you figure out what you need to do (by listening to players) and remove these obscene crates from the game entirely. (or only keep them for common resources or credit items and things like that.)
It’s becoming a pretty big thing now and sooner or later you’ll have to. It’s best to be ahead of the curve and already be working on alternatives so you don’t fall behind.
Focus a department entirely on cosmetics. Make them cost actual real money but do fantastic visual and audio things. Make ship “skins” that completely change how the ship looks. Make engine and hull color-pickers with price ranges based on what you pick. Make rare super ultra mega awesome epic stuff that looks like it could kill you if it just looked at you too firmly and make it cost a fair amount.
There are so many ways you could go with this and locking things up behind RNG walls is a horrible way to implement things.
This applies to the Iridium containers too. Maybe containers should be random, but oncr we get one, we should be able to pick out exactly what part we want from it. And “random” doesn’t mean “90% of the economy drops 0.0001% of the time”. No. It means that all items have an equal chance of occurring. Sure, rare things can exist, but don’t make those rare things -necesary-. Add cool new unique stuff that you can ONLY get through these super rare drops. Like the mining laser and unidentified engine booster etc. Those would be incredible additions to a super rare loot table that people rarely see.
Heres a screenshot from a robocraft email because my train of thought derailed and exploded:
