Fun little game, but too simplistic

[TwiiK]

This game is right up my alley with the sci-fi setting, space exploration, ship customizing etc. Sadly I feel it's the kind of game where I want or need a second game to play while I play this one. There's so little to do, so little interaction. I feel it would be perfect for iOS, and I'm not going to demand a massive epic for 10 bucks, but there just isn't enough game in it for me.

It was fun to try and well worth the money, and it gave me a lot of ideas of my own for games I now want to make, but here's a list of my ideas for those who care.

A few things that would improve it immensely for me (The ideas get more far fetched as the list goes):

• Multi-ship encounters
• Remove the teleport aspect. Boarding parties should be able to be shot down and you should be able to form a defense near air ducts or weak points in the hull. Breaching and boarding should play off of each other.
• Increase every number by a factor of 10 or more. Have weapons deal 10-20 damage, have the ships have a couple of hundred hull strength etc. etc. There's so little room for variation now, so few possibilities for different weapons, different ships, different shields. This would allow for extremely powerful single target weapons, mirv type weapons etc.
• Upgradable weapons. Having that lvl 2 burst laser and never being able to upgrade it to lvl 3 kind of blows.
• Accuracy modifiers for weapons. Now it seems like every weapon is 100% accurate.
• Remove the aspect of targeting enemy ship rooms or reserve it for some super scanner subsystem or equivalent. You should be able to target exterior things like radar dishes, weapons, engines, air ducts.
• 10 times the amount of crew. This would require that the tile based movement is removed, but it would make every aspect of the game more epic. Losing just a few crew now is devastating. You should lose a few every encounter or dozens if there's a big fight.
• Properly customizable ships, similar to dungeon keeper or perhaps x-com. You create the actual layout for the rooms. The size of the rooms affect how many weapons you can have, how big an engine you can fit, how big your shield generator can be etc. You start off with enough money for creating a few basic rooms and as you earn money you can dock at certain places and expand your rooms and create new ones. Just like in x-com or dungeon keeper smart layouts are key for when you are invaded etc.

A few of them probably doesn't fit or changes the game completely and that's because they were ideas I had for my fantasy game while walking to work just now. :p

[LUCADENA]

I like this ideas, all of them.
They are mostly undoable now that the game is out, but I hope for some mod or a sequel.

[curithwin]

If you think this game is simple try and make one yourself and the first ones will be simple. This game is simple and extremely fun in my mind. if you want something more complex wait till FTL 2 or 3 maybe...

[Yaerav]

Sounds like great ideas for a $40 sequel, to be released in, say, four or five years

[Guswut]

You should look into Escape Velocity Nova, as it is much much closer to what you're suggesting via your ideas.

[Kestral B]

I love EV Nova with all my heart.
This game is great as well, and has tons of potential. I hope very much to see a expansion pack / DLC. Unofficial mods I usually don't get into, as they are almost never well supported.

[madattak9]

Apart from the remove teleporter, room targeting and crew I agree with this. But alot of it will probably come in updates hopefully.

[2quidy]

Gotta add justifications to those points OP, otherwise it's just another "wish list"? Why/How would these improve the game? Because: The thread below reads: "Man this game is HARD"!

I find the current system really nicely done because different systems wrap around each other which adds more considerations about their function and additional use you can squeeze out of them. That impresses me a lot so far.

[Ottomic]

I would honestly greatly expand the amount and variety of encounters, maybe put a couple pictures that illustrate what is happening. Races, ships, cultures, etc. (not necessarily all playable) However, there are things that, in my opinion, would work against the game if expanded upon. I mean, I'm not a studious of videogames, but almost all Roguelikes i've played are pretty simple in their presentation for one reason: it helps to give focus, and to present everything in a neat and orderly manner. Most of all, it allows for easy repetition without having to overcomplicate things.

So I humbly request the designers: do stuff. LOTS of stuff. Give me the chance to choose between different missions on a station. Make the galaxy a persistent one where it's possible to reclaim a ship if everyone inside dies without it exploding (à la Dwarf Fortress), make my actions have durable consequences and intertwine in epic storylines, make it more open, maybe include some sort of crafting/gear specialization system? Whatever you do however, please don't mess much with the base system. It's pretty cool the way it is, already.

(Also, you can entrench yourself on the infirmary, and if your weapons are 100% accurate all the time well then congratulations buddy, you don't know how I wish for that to happen in my game.)

[Eyjio]

I really dislike most of the ideas, for reasons of personal taste. Here's my run down:

• Multi-ship encounters would be nearly impossible under current game conditions - imagine 2 auto defence drones with 3 missile launchers each. Not even the defence drones could save you. Plus, I think it'd detract from the charm of small space battles and just become a bit... clunky
• Boarding shouldn't be nerfed - it's hard enough already thanks to medical bay camping unless you're using the 4 mantis teleport ship. I like the teleport aspect, it's far more intense not just being able to go "enemy will come here, stick 2 mantis next to the door". As for breaching, that's the only reason to get boarding drones - to create hull breaches to cover themselves. You'd need to totally change how you interact with the ship to do this.
• Why would you stick things up by a factor of 10? There's already some ridiculously powerful weapons - the Artillery beam, the Glaive beam and the breaching/fire bombs. I can't really see how this would help at all.
• Upgradeable weapons is a good idea, though some trades (Mk II burst for Mk III) are actually worse on a per-power basis.
• This is already in the game - it's your opponents evade ability. Did you not get far enough for enemies to start dodging shots?
• Why? That's literally changing the whole game. Why would targeting a radar dish be better than shooting the sensor room? As it is, we can have more variety as you get to see fires consume their ships, have biological weapons and have to pick between killing their vital crew or their vital systems - hugely important against the final boss. Heck, you can see their ship drain of oxygen, which is fun. I don't get why you'd want to remove that.
• Okay, you just want a different game. This game is built so that you emote with the crew, you don't WANT to lose any as they're all valuable. Adding way more would devalue that and it would lose all story telling potential - your last 3 guys fighting to repair a burning ship is a lot more dramatic that redshirts 1 through 30 trying to not die, despite some of their crew dying every battle. Honestly, this is just a bad idea.
• This is a cool idea but it would mean the premade ships would lose their appeal - why use one when you can build better? The only way to balance that would be to make premades better, which would basically be telling the player to not design their own ship. For that reason, I dislike it.

Essentially, I think you wanted Space: Total War. You've changed almost all core aspects of the game and whilst these idea together might make a good game, it wouldn't even resemble what we've come to love.