I’m talking here about the main version of the game with a quest available. My gripe with it is that 90% of the reason to actually play the game is gone when you reach Polaris space and it’s trade stations, having money becomes trivial and it’s easy enough to get the resources for any ship by just buying them. It would only take a few small changes to balance the game such that there would still be a point to exploring and building elaborate ships and bases late game besides manually running POIs for fun like you’re playing quake. First only the Factory, Settlement, and Medical traders should be guy goods sold from the Warehouse trader and in lesser quantities. Factory and Settlement should be buying supplies in 250 to 300 quantities, while Medical should only buy 25 to 75. Trade station services should also go up in price at least 4 fold, with ammunition purchases being restricted only to Honored players except Zirax stations with will sell them to neutrals. Next “Crew” should be banned from storage in Container type blocks (Cargo Boxes and Container extensions). Instead they must occupy a volume of around 250, and be either carried in player inventory, or be placed in Passenger Seats and Cryo Chambers. The latter would be made possible by turning those items into storage containers with a volume of exactly 250. Next, rare materials must be reduced in stock from miners. Zascosium, Erestrum, Gold, and Platinum ore should be sold in quantities of about 250. Lastly Factory should stop selling optronic components, and instead sell whole blocks at a price that would be 80 to 100% more than if the player were to buy ore then refine and craft. This will tie in the next change on how the factory works. The ship Factory should then only accept complete blocks (not ingots or components), or at least vastly increase the time penalty for using ingots and components instead of blocks by something like 80% for ingots and 40% for components. Finally, the overpowered special core that has no CPU limit, both the one rewarded by Legacy POIs and Explorer tokens should be BA only, and not placeable on any of the vehicles. I believe put together these changes will make Vanilla much more fun to explore once the main quest is complete. Instead of just buying anything and making a few space treks like you’re playing creative mode, the player will be encouraged to create their own strongholds, manufacturing plants, and auto miner fleets. And be strongly motivated to take on POIs for reasons other than just trying to find the epics. When I first discovered that Vanilla essentially gave you infinite money I was so disappointed that I went to play RE and basically never looked back except to explore the updated quest line. With those changes it actually makes sense to maintain a permanent Vanilla save you always return to. Also as a side note, I don’t know if Charged CS is an option for Hover Vessels yet, but it certainly should be. That and if Dark Faction is enabled in the Vanilla play through it should have its own POIs instead of just drop from Infected. I hope these are popular ideas, this would make the game like 300% fun for me.
