Anything that's externally-mounted can easily be damaged if you get hit when your shields are down. The linked-fire weapons in Corporate Command are all externally-mounted, for example, so if you want to keep your extra offense, you have to be very careful about your shield strength. Repair levels a...

Plants are really only a couple % efficient in practice, they are able to utilize only a fraction of the solar energy that falls on them I was going to chime in and say this. Plants are about an order of magnitude worse at turning light into energy compared to modern photovoltaic cells. That said, ...

The Wolfen can't, though... Wolfen's max armor is 12 tons while the EI500's is 20. Whoops, this is what I get for operating from memory. I never liked playing the EI500 due to the single weapon mount so my memory of its stats are fuzzy. :) Regarding the actual power of sports cars vs. trucks, I gue...

The Wolfen with the high engine output would be fine with heavy armor. Or depending on the upper limit for speed could become very fast with light armor. The freighter could gain some speed by switching to lighter armor (but not too much as the hull + cargo will generally weigh more than the armor)...

Looting wrecks is mostly useful when player stashes all accumulated loot into one wrecked station that no one will disturb. (Except Salvagers, which is why they are kill on sight for players.) I have screens and screens of loot when I manage my stuff, and if I accidently drop my military id or othe...

One solution to the armor mass issue is to have ships lose max-speed as well as maneuverability. Can we have the dockscreen show the impact that a given piece of armor will have on the ship's maneuverability, alongside the other stats the armor shows? Something like Heavy Blast Plate 7 tons 180 HP ...

Another thing you could do to make armor mass more meaningful is to just flat-out say "this ship can only equip up to N tons of gear", including in that their armor, weapons, engine, shield, reactor, etc. This of course does suspension of disbelief no favors; it's not like Newton's laws of force sto...

My general attitude on this is a) the game should accurately tell the player what's going on (this is not IMO a game about discovering how the game mechanics work), and b) the game should be flexible so that modders can do what they like with damage types, resists, etc. For (a), it's not clear to me...

That is fine if Human Space always assumes Stars of the Pilgrim. It may be different in another possible adventure in New Beyond that downplays Charon and Korolov, features and promotes kinetic users (like say... Urak), and/or gives most ships random weapons. Yes, that's a good point. Item balance ...

And exactly what you said is encouraged to players as they gain experience in buying and selling : not just in the Universe, but maybe they will take those smarts with them outside the game & not simply pay or accept the price of convenience ( this game is played by several age groups). Remember th...

Stations Buy/ Sell Limits will NOT be Broken by simply selling large amounts at once : the stations has a limit on it's currency and even if it did restock that currency : you gave it a zillion tons of one product already, it's still not going to buy more of the same. Let's say the station has 10k ...

As for things being used playing a huge part of balance, by that reasoning, laser resistance should be worth significantly more than kinetic resistance because the vast majority of enemies that appear in missions at low levels (and in Charon) is Charon Pirates. Kinetics get used by Centauri (less i...

Damage falloff reduction introduces problems - the Flenser is already the only weapon you need from the Battle Arena to Jiang's Star, and a well enhanced turbolaser turret can handle any gunships up until the Ares show up. While I like the idea of some factions making use of outclassed weapons, the...

KM500 Stilletos? You're still using the light NAMI launcher against Ares ships and stations? No wonder you're having trouble. ;) Blast damage is completely out of date at this point in the game and KM500s don't do much damage per-hit anyway. Try using Red Strelkas, or if you can get your hands on th...

Speaking as someone who's only played 1.6 and 1.7, I don't find stations to be that hard to crack, you just need to bring enough WMD to the party. Most launchers will do plenty of WMD to destroy stations, or failing that there's plenty of primary weapons that can do the job too, just more slowly. Th...