The whole faction interaction system was discussed at length in dev videos. This isn't something people are making up or misunderstanding.
Yes the faction system as it exists is disappointing. Too easy to max relationship early in the game and then... what? I have had a couple of encounters where one or another faction is going to have their reputation decreased but it means nothing as it is so easy to improve the relationship. And no sign of befriending a particular faction bringing special benefits.
The game is being datamined, and I am pretty sure they, as for now, have proven that the "big faction battle" from the E3 Demo was pre-scripted and it doesn't happen in real game. Fuck, basically everything in that demo was pre-scripted.
The battle from E3 was definitely scripted.
Where do you get your information of what the dataming has revealed? Or are the revelations pure speculation or your part?
I always find it sad when we need to use mods just to do some of the stuff in the demo footage. The low flight mod for example, which lets you fly around planets without the artificial 'safety cushion' that doesn't let you approach the ground or any surface feature.
I've been able to crash into things by not repairing the deflectors.
(Yeah cheesy.) If memory serves they added the no-crash feature late in the process when 'testers' were having problems. Definitely a bad decision though...
In all honesty the insistence of claiming that the burden of proof is on those saying that there are no space battles (despite no playing ever seeing them. And there are people who have gotten to the center of the galaxy eleven times) because it hasn't been conclusively proven that somewhere in the game there aren't space battles taking place without anyone seeing them is in itself astonishing.
Huh? If you are implying that I asked for that you are badly mistaken. In fact I said you can't prove a negative but that if you want to make claims like 'no-one has seen it in the game' you better have a look to see if anyone is claiming to have seen it in the game. And some people are claiming to have seen it.
Remember the flying creatures, the big airborne eels and stuff? Haven't seen any.
I've seen big flying centipedes. Reckon that's close enough.
The major thing which bothers me is that beyond the very early game I don't see how a lot of the mechanics do anything. Once slots are maxed, techs known, upgrades chosen a lot of the 'content' (the buildings, aliens, drops) become redundant. Couple that with the sheer abudance of resources and the lack of anything to do with units and the only thing left is the core exploration and a few nuiscance pirates and sentinels. Given that it seems like a huge waste of development resources to have a shitload content which really only has any application in the very early game. I feel like the dev's have been sucked into trying to provide a bit of what everyone is demanding and hence letting down the development of their own envisaged game. I would have much preferred a nuanced faction system and forget the rpg faux-progression bit of the early game. They probably would have had time over for several more features and might have balanced the techs for decent play rather than walk in the park kind of difficulty.
On the brighter side the soundtrack works really well for me, as does the procgen audio for the creatures, and the planet scenery is quite exceptional.