Two requests

[Hellfire_Daemon]

So I should start by saying I love the game, the labour of love that the team have put into it shines through on every side. It is just a hair off perfect. There are two issues that I think keep it from being as amazing as it could be. So I wanted to post my thoughts. I fully recognise that I have no idea of the challenges involved, but wanted to post a couple of ideas.

Collisions:

Issue: Oh my god, so much better than when the X3 games first came out. I don't remember a tonne of the original games but I remember having to mod HEAVILY to deal with the collision issues. Still every now and then the auto pilot flies me into the side of a gate, or a ship rams another ship. It's definitely no longer game ruining but it does get under your skin.

Recommended resolution: Cut collision damage significantly and add some bounce effect. There needs to be a bit of a fender bender option in there. So if you clip something maybe you get jarred to the side. I like the idea of shields making you a lot "bouncier" while if you have two ships going hull to hull you're more likely to smash.

The endless spawns:

Issue: As a player you have to scratch, your ships together, you capture them, buy them, build them. It's a lot of pain and work. The NPCs just randomly appear, constantly and there's not as much logic to it as there should be. There's nothing worse than having spent an age getting a few stations up and a nice little economy going only for a random xenon Q to appear in sector and smash it all. This is not a Xenon Q that flew there, this is one that randomly jumped into the back end of paranid space and started shooting. The paranid military doesn't react at all, there's no rapid response destroyer coming to say "Hey you, you shouldn't be in this sector blowing the local populace up" they just shrug and let it happen. Then take the situation where you clear a xenon sector. No mean feat, only to have a constant, and I do mean constant, flow of ships popping up, and not through the jump gate, they're just appearing randomly around the sector.

Recommended resolution: There needs to be more logic to how ships are created. A faction should only create its own ships at ship yards. Once created at ship yards they should then spread out through the universe. Jump drives should be limited or removed and unfocused jumps certainly shouldn't be used by random ships. The universe is in a state of significant conflict. It makes no sense for a military to go hey I'm just going to tell this stupidly expensive destroyer to jump to a random location where it will then fight to the death. The way I would suggest it works is for factions to build fleets at their shipyards and then try to capture sectors. Militaries should react to hostile incursions. Sure the border sectors are going to get a fair pummelling. That's to be expected. Core sectors should be much more secure. It would be much more convincing for the AI to have more fleet behaviour, a group of pirates fly into a poorly defended border sector, their scouts go out to watch for incoming and the fighters pounce on poorly guarded traders, then off they run with the goods. Military engagements might be more spectacular battlefields. If it were on me I'd spread the universe out more and add more buffer in the middle. So I'd have a core for each race, but with larger less claimed neutral zones in between. Sure they'd be rife with pirates, probably xenon too, maybe some Kha'ak but flying through lawless sectors comes with its own risks and a player could carve out their own corners more easily. Why the player is the only one dropping satellites and setting up early warnings makes no sense. should take