Some little feedback on the Akua start - looks even more amazing, nice POIs and story (though I broke this by doing all the POIs before I talked to the Talon). My only gripe was the Abandoned POI (the one based on the missile base) on Akua. It's a great POI, enjoyed doing it (though got confused by the yes/no buttons around the rock fall - thought one was yes, the other no). However, it is positively dripping in loot - I walked out of there with Optronic matrices, epic weapons and huge amounts of resources, mid game stuff (repair bays, lasers etc). For a POI on a starter world (and the easiest to boot) it feels way to much, at the very least I don't think you should be able to walk away with epic stuff on a starter planet. That one POI would set you up for the entire starter system! For me, the loot should be toned down at least in terms of the high tier stuff!
I'd like to echo this. While it is a really excellent challenge for a single well equipped player it really seems to be aimed at a multi-player team of well equipped players. A player with light armor and basic weapons, especially someone who has never played the game, will likely die over an over again to progress through it. The "Yes / No" switches in the control room are wired as a two-man rule interlock, although they don't have the timer circuit you would expect to deactivate a switch if the second isn't closed at the same time- I'm not even sure you could do something like that with basic signal control. One way to accomplish a similar behavior that a single player could resolve would involve relocating one of the switches some distance away and having IDA suggest a hack... "Commander, this appears to be one of two switches that must be closed simultaneously in order to trigger an explosive charge somewhere in the base. The second appears to be in a room that's referenced as 'Security' ... if you can clear a path to that switch and then return here I can use a bus saturation attack to make it look like the first switch remains closed, but I can only do that for 12 seconds ... any longer and a watchdog timer will lock us both out and you'll have to come back here to try again." A simple delay on the first switch could then implement IDAs hack and give the user the time they need to get to the second switch. Anyhow, a very fun POI but it feels like it would be really nasty on a noob, it certainly killed me plenty.
