The current blueprint factory has been confirmed to be a placeholder, but there is no info on what will replace it or when. The current tech tree is also a bit of a placeholder and a proper research system would be way better. Scanners or detectors for space are on the radar (pun intended). CPU system will help a lot with overall ship balance. Maybe we'll finally get rid of the silly per-turret limits (why can I have only 12 projectile turrets?). Those systems are "needed" in the sense that the overall game will benefit from it, especially the late game. It is difficult to craft and balance end game mechanics without the core mechanics being put in yet. Like, a research system, CPU limit, and shipyards will drastically change the pace of the game and so you need those systems in place before adding in end game.
Honestly, I'm not sure the pace needs slowing down any further, it takes quite a long time to get to end game. Everything people are mentioning to me just sound like a way to further extend the early part of the game, and it's long enough (just my opinion, obviously you guys disagree). I also only play single player, so I don't play with turret limits or anything like that, perhaps some of these things are required for PvP, I'm not sure? I'm just thinking of single player when I'm talking about all this. I know a lot of these things have been deemed placeholders, I'm just saying I don't think they necessarily need to be.
And how exactly do you envision that functioning? Does it simply reveal everything when you get within a certain range or does it depend on what the object is (ship, asteroid, base, etc)? Can that range be upgraded? How much power does the system require? What about stealth? So you have no problem with not being able to dock HVs and SVs to SVs, or CVs to CVs? Or with the limit of 1 repair bay per structure? Sure, it works to completely bypass mass/volume restrictions and allows complete ships of arbitrary size to be constructed without any energy input and spawned anywhere. It also only allows building blueprints at one speed (while it's easy to imagine linking dozens of constructors to a shipyard device to allow it to build a blueprint many times faster than the base speed). None of the things I mentioned need have any negative impact on the time it takes to get to endgame. Progress to the endgame right now is mainly driven by resource and XP collection rates (somehow, mowing down hordes of NPCs unlocks better tech?). With a proper sensor system, you could actually find resource asteroids in space (and use stealth to slip past Zirax patrols if you can't fight them yet). With a proper docking system, you wouldn't be forever shuffling your ships around and specialized ships would be easily viable in SP. With a research system, unlocking tech wouldn't be a matter of putting bullets in things, but actually collecting (or buying) knowledge from the planets that you explore (or salvaging valuable information from that bunch of pirates after blowing them to smithereens). With a shipyard system, constructing a large ship need not take realtime days with the right setup.
In the default survival mode, you reach end game (obtaining level 25 and a source of erestrum/zascosium) after visiting a couple of planets and spending some time farming or killing wildlife in an SV.
There's some truth to what you say, but there's also an argument that can be made that they should spend more time on what the mid-game and end-game should be, before "perfecting" all the systems. If the endgame is mostly just tougher enemies, and maybe a storyline and quests being added, then sure, that approach is right. But do they envision the endgame as something more? Is there going to be fleet combat, larger scale battles, more economic-type content, a 4X-like explore/conquest mechanic for factions, deeper exploration of a larger galaxy? If the end game is going to have some different types of gameplay, then trying to "perfect" systems like combat AI, weapons/shields, and so on might not be a great idea if it has to be revisited yet again later. The size of planets, and the ships/bases you can build, suggests they envision a larger "scope" for the game. I think they should put a larger stake in the ground as to what that scope is, before they finish some of the systems. What do you do once you can fly around in a CV? Is there a reason to have multiple ships and bases? Do you mostly solve quests and missions? Do you fight battles and conquer territory? Is there some economic endgame? I'd like to see them add SOME mid-game and end-game content, even if it is only 5% of what the game would eventually have, just so they can start working on systems that last through the overall scope of the game. They've been doing a lot of re-iterating on the early game but it still isn't clear what Empyrion is going to be eventually.
I envisage that working in exactly the same way the detectors planet side work, just reveal POI's, ships/drones, and resources as a dot on the map within a particular distance. Never in my single player game (again my reference point here) have I thought stealth is needed, cloaking devices might be cool, but certainly again never something I've ever thought of as missing. Nope, again the docking works fine, never once thought I wish I could have multiple CV's all docked together. This one in particular seems to be to want to slow pace down, honestly most of the time I play without mass/volume anyway, (although currently I am giving it a go, mostly just to see how it plays). So far I am finding all it really does is slow things down more simply because it forces you to travel back and forth a lot more than you would otherwise need to. In other words I'm seeing mass and volume as adding more grind to the game. Nothing wrong with killing things giving more XP, most games do that. This is one of my favourite games, the other being 7 Days to Die, and they both gain XP and unlocks in the same way by killing things. It works, and it's fun.
Yes and so far I've been playing my current game every spare hour I've had since A10 came out, I still only have a small crappy base, a good SV, but no CV, and I've only started exploring the 2nd planet so far. Why? Because I've not been rushing mostly, I've just been enjoying it, I've been concentrating on getting my standing up with the Polaris, trying to get more base attacks to get to me, done a lot of the missions etc. I'd consider myself after around 30 hours of the current game still early mid game right now. EDIT: Thinking about it, I don't consider that end game actually, I consider end game, once I can spawn my combat CV in, and have enough energy and weaponry to power it indefinitely, at that point the current system means I can now just travel around and destroy anything at will, that's my end game. It's close to yours actually, but I actually have to have made use of most of those resources to build up to being pretty much indestructable. At that particular point I was hoping the attack waves would increase at me, but it's still not common enough to consider it a threat imho. Also in one of the playthroughs I did, I considered end game once I had that CV, but also became a millionaire.
Playing through the A10 experimentals, there was one planet I found that only needed an SV to get to, but it was really fun, it was a source of both zascosium and erestrum so I was lucky in that I didn't need a CV to get to those resources, but every single resource was guarded by zirax rocket turrets, and the dangerous animals and drones there were plentiful and the environment was also pretty deadly. It took me quite a few attempts to secure both those resources with autominers. But damn that was fun, why? Because of the threat, the constant battles to try and get to those resources. It wasn't anything to do with a bunch of production technology or CPU resources. It was just some damn good battles, and I had a great time trying to secure that world.
