I think the idea of open space is real neat, but I’ve played many games before this one and the reason I play this is because it reminds me of Space Cowboy Online (Ace Online and Air Rivals since the split).
Well the thing is, I’m surprised with the lack of interaction you have when out in open space. There aren’t any space stations you could land at, no NPCs to interact with and collecting resources are limited to being an easter egg hunts. You aren’t allowed to trade amongst players, something that surprises me because you think someone would want to gather and sell bulks of resources to others if they could.
There are space stations out in space that look like they having landing pads, but to my disappointment there isn’t a way to land or really interact with them other than just being a part of the environment, even those satellites that look like they could be refueling stations simply have fuel canisters floating around them rather than any kind of interaction with them.
What we have here isn’t bad, but its very bare minimum and could easily be expanded upon to bring something real neat to the table.
I would honestly like to see black market dealers in open space, where you can land at these outposts and interact with the NPC for things, being from smuggling goods into certain space stations for rewards or killing certain players who accumulated bounties. Actually I want a system in place where you can deliver goods to various stations, like buying stuff specifically meant to be sold at another station requiring pilgrimages to make money based on the distance, what you carried, and how much you carried. To do this though we’d need to see inventory also expanded, where you can carry stacks of items rather than each square being occupied by a single item regardless if its the same as an existing one.
There should be little outposts in space that you can land at to repair, refuel, store collected loot, etc. Though to many this would seem like a “useless” feature since you can easily repair or gather fuel as it is, I think having locations to land and interact with outside of the big 3 space ports (which are really just different looking garages) would simply make the open space look more lived in rather than static background. You could probably expand upon those kind of things to make it so outposts can be owned and upgraded by corporations who claimed the location and do things like charge taxes on people who use their outposts.
This could lead to altering fuel drops to stop players from needing to blow up convoys just to get fuel and simply provide locations that could also function as trade hubs between players.
All I’m asking is to add some depth and interaction to the environment, I don’t expect to have mining lasers and shoot asteroids to gather materials, but I do expect to see the effects of corporations owning territory and having influences like whether they support criminal activities or enforce police patrols; affecting whether the sector encourages PVP or PVE by making it safer or not.
My biggest wish though is to actually have planets that you can go onto, well not literally land on it, but having like maps that get you pretty close to the planet surface, it could make specific sectors of space with planets linked to them worth more in ways. Imagine corporations owning the only door to certain planets that have certain trade goods and such. I imagine choices like smuggling your way past corporate space borders or other activities that influence being a space pirate or otherwise.
Anyways, I wish the best for this game, it’s pretty neat to play it long ago and it was only multiplayer pvp, to now see it has pve and open space.
