Weapon Mod Upgrades:
I love the weapon mod upgrade aspect, it gives me alot of joy to look for better weapon mods which potentially change the entire gameplay feeling of a weapon. This should definitely be kept and even expanded (like shield/armor/scanner/engine mods)
Suggestions how to expand it : The RNG aspect for dropping those is a bit 'meh'. I'd like AI ships to have weapon mods too and they should drop them when being defeated , that would give combat a bit more variety during combat and would give the player a reason to scan ships for upgrades that the player wants. Heck, you could even make it so each race has different priorities for upgrades : Teladi has alot of armor/cargo mod upgrades, split have alot of weapon mods upgrades, borons have alot of engine mods, so it'll give the player a reason to look up (and blow up
) ships of different races.Xenons having civil ships/economy :
Its a wierd thing, but i love the fact that in X:R Xenons finally have some sort of fake mini economy going on, with xenon mining ships flying around and mining asteroids. While the player can't trade with them it still makes the Xenons far more believable than in previous titles where Xenons just had unlimited ressources.
Suggestions how to expand it : Destroying Xenon stations or disrupting their mining process could have affect on their ship production at their shipyards.
Staff on capital ships :
I think having staff on capital ships is a neat idea that makes ships a bit more personalized. For the first few ten or so capital ships it's entertaining to gather a good crew for them and do some missions to get locations of good crew members
What could be improved : While this is interesting and new when you are just starting out a new empire, doing this for the 200th time can be annoying. Allowing your manager to equip new bought ships with better staff and default commands would be a nice option.
Capital ship subsystems :
I really enjoy X:Rs capital ships having separately destroyable subsystems. It reminds me of Freespace 2s subsystems and makes combat against capitals quite more strategic.
What could be improved : I think having a ship scanner equipment that, after scanning a ship, highlights the scanned ships subsystems in a brighter color or outline would be nice. Also the selection should get improved, quite often i try leftclicking for selecting the subsystems but the target system instead selects the main hull and going through all subsystems via "select next subsystem" takes quite long. Some kind of "select targets subsystem on screen closest to the mouse cursor"-key would be nice.
No loading times during gameplay :
This is more of a technical thing, but should be mentioned : I like that Egosoft made this game have no loading screen (except for loading a save game/starting a new game) and barely any noticeable loading interruptions (unlike E:D or No Mans Sky, which have loading screens disguised as "warping animation"). Kudos for that!
Optional missions
I like the variety optional missions give. While i barely do the "build a station" missions i think the other ones are often a neat way to get some quick cash or do to some stuff when you are bored while waiting for your ships to build a station.
What i'd like to have improved : i think missions like "defend the station" need to be a bit less obvious when spawning enemy ships. For example, it is a bit immersion breaking when just after you accepted the mission out of nowhere 3 Xenon Ks show up... what a "coincidence". Have it the other way around : Spawn the enemy ships far away and let them fly towards the zone and only then, after they spawned, offer the mission while these ships are alive. Would make far more sense.
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