free form

[Betelgeuse]

It seems lately even with more weapons and ships (even player ships). There is less and less to do in Transcendence. The two biggest things that come to mind that reflect this are greater and greater station destruction pentalties and the duralloy being made rare killing early trade.

While those things may be for the benifit for the game it lessens the amount of things you can do in game. It seems like there is a push of making the game just a find next eniemy station and kill it then repeat untill the end of the game.

There may be other things in the game most are not worth it after early game. (the arena is fun but very short) Maybe Caron should be moved to a system or two earlier because people know that St. K. is just byond that with the better stations. (the difference between pre St. K vs post St. K stations is huge)

Does anyone have any sudgestions on how to make the game more free form? (maybe make looting stations not as much of a gold mine)

[Clear Air Turbulence]

I think more variation in the price that items can be bought and sold at would open up the trading game more. You'd think you could make a large profit buying water from the ice miners and selling it at colonies, but there isn't enough markup.

Maybe some randomization would be in order - one station may always pay a good price for a particular resource, higher than stations of that type normally would pay. Likewise, you may find a mine that is selling a particular ore or product at greatly reduced prices. Make it so that sometimes a station has an emergency need for a particular item and will pay a high price for it, but only up to a certain amount. Make bases that normally don't buy things occasionally need something unusual - you might pull into a weapons station and be told that their CEO is visiting soon and they'll pay really high prices for luxury foodstuffs for a banquet they have planned, if you can get it to them quick enough.

This would make playing as a trader more interesting, and motivate players to keep track of the prices at various stations. If the RNG happens to create an extremely profitable trade route by accident, it could be made so they only last for a certain number of trades before going back to old prices, or even make it so that if the player buys and sells from two particular stations a certain number of times in a row a strong pirate or raider encounter will spawn for them as they leave the base.

[evilbob]

how about haggling to get better prices?
not in the commonwealth stations, but in colonies, ice farms and the like.

[Betelgeuse]

That would work great for tinkerers.
Maybe now that it is easier to repair items it would be good to have items in stations be damaged and not just ship items.

Also maybe a used item dealer. You don't know if it is broken or not before you buy it but they are cheaper than regular.

I would love a motivation to attack stations other than just items or money. A faction system would help in this regard. (but would be hard to put in)