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[Nirur Torir]

This looks pretty cool. Downloaded for later playing. I misread and was slightly confused by the installer starting with the name 'uginstall.'

[Gabeux]

The description of this game is something I've always looking forward to playing.

Sure, there's the X series and a few other games, but they never really 'do it' for me. (also, any X game can get really annoying really quickly, unfortunately).
So the more, the better.

Thanks for bringing it up, I'm downloading it and will check it out soon

[Farce]

Trying to click on options in drop down menus seems to make the game think I'm clicking on something outside the window, so I am unable to actually change things like when I fire on stuff or assigning AI to ships and stuff, which is kinda really bad.

[Gabeux]

Hmm I'm trying the game out.
The references to X series are totally obvious, which feels a bit weird. Since it's an indie game though, totally understandable.

I just flew around my starting system doing a few supply missions and selling stuff, trying to understand the economic model and whatnot, but I think there's a lot of work to be done in the game..especially regarding in the UI, and everything needs tooltips ASAP. And some feedback when you click things. And probably some strafing. And some effects, any will do.
In any case, I'm pretty sure I'll get my..space joystick stuck in the fan soon.

But it got me excited since it feels like a Top-Down X game with less magical economy, military and factions..which is all I was looking for really.
The potential is really there.

The only annoying bug I bumped into is that I can't load/quickload a save after I already loaded one. I have to restart the game to load any save.
EDIT: Weird enough, I can't reproduce it anymore and it's working fine.

EDIT:

-post-

Oh, hello there. I somehow managed to miss that you - the dev - posted here.
Welcome to the forums. I totally see what you're going for here, and I hope you achieve it.

As I said above, I always looked forward to a game like X, without magical economy and actual, functioning factions.

All I can say is...Remember..We, will be watching. 

[EsKa]

Hey,

Trying to click on options in drop down menus seems to make the game think I'm clicking on something outside the window, so I am unable to actually change things like when I fire on stuff or assigning AI to ships and stuff, which is kinda really bad.

Sounds like your CPU/GPU isn't keeping up with the game. Have you disabled the "cap FPS to refresh rate" setting ? If so, don't do that. If not, what are your computer's CPU/GPU/RAM ?

Granted your desktop doesn't look like Win95 (meaning you have the "Windows Themes" service running), best performances can be achieved by disabling the Full Hardware Acceleration and bloom shaders and be sure that cap FPS to refresh rate is checked.

I just flew around my starting system doing a few supply missions and selling stuff, trying to understand the economic model and whatnot, but I think there's a lot of work to be done in the game..especially regarding in the UI, and everything needs tooltips ASAP.

Yes the game badly needs a tutorial, and I am adding one at the moment, meanwhile the wiki can be fairly useful. Also the economic system is being rewritten at the moment, beta 3 made some changes, but it's not yet completed. There's also a bunch of tool-tips available, they are disabled by default because of the bug I explained earlier.

That said, I am very interested in knowing what are the biggest issues UI wise. It's something I have a hard time figuring out myself. I am so used to the controls that it's very difficult for me to notice issues without precise input from 3rd parties (like you!). Be harsh if need be, as long as the raised issues and possible answers are coherent. ATM, the issue with the UI is not that I can't do any better, it's just that I don't know what need to be improved.

The only annoying bug I bumped into is that I can't load/quickload a save after I already loaded one. I have to restart the game to load any save.

Could you expand on your issue here ? I am not sure I understand. Quick save/load use the 99th save slot. Do you want it to save/load on your last "legit" save slot ? Or am I completely missing the point ?

x³, x3, X3 ix-Troy!

Yeah, I should have mentioned it, I am one of the "big" modders for X3, also known as SerialKicked. I am the author of Pirate Guild and ADS (amongst other smaller mods), two plugins featured in the "SuperBox" edition of X3. I have been a modder for the X-Universe since X2.

X-Rebirth is the reason why UG exists in the first place. So I can showcase what could have been done building upon the X3's foundations instead of that "thing".

UG is somewhat similar to X3, that's perfectly true and I am not trying to hide it. Interestingly enough, UG is the follow up on a mod I tried to make for X3. There's plenty of in-game references to X3 alongside other space-sim games I liked. That said, similarities are superficial at best:

The economy, as basic as it is right now, serves a purpose (building warships and stations) and is real. In X3, the only guy using money, in the whole universe, was you. Here, you can effectively bankrupt another faction or cripple it so much it won't be able to rebuild its military losses. There's plenty of way to do it, but that's more of a spoiler than something that can be put in a manual.

Factions do have an AI, they can declare war, build alliances, and claim sectors. The player can, and should, do the same. While it was partially possible with mods in X3, here it's fully integrated in the base game. That's basically a whole new 4X layer over the space-sim bits.

The insane amount of micro management required to do anything has been cut down. Every station you build is fully automated and self sufficient from the get go. Basically, your average game is much shorter. Knowing the game perfectly well, and using tricks that won't fly in the final version, it took me around 5 hours to grow from a simple trader to the leader of half the galaxy on the default freeware map. This "short" play-through time is intended. The final version will feature both randomized maps and a hell lot of settings to increase replay value. Also, faction to faction relationship being what it is, it's very unlikely that 2 games on the same map and settings will ever look the same.

That and many other things (map design, ship roles, dynamic missions, event system) make UG a very different beast from X games.

All I can say is...Remember..We, will be watching.

nice reference

Cheers,
SK.

[Gabeux]

Cool.
Let me address each subject.
I will warn in advance that when I like something, I tend to list a lot of things. I'll try to keep short though. 

X series:
That's good to know. I noticed on your site about the modding. I can't remember, but I may or may have not used your mods, heh.
And I mentioned similarity to the X series in a good way - because it's one of my favorite games really, but the magical economy and terrible complex building feature always makes me turn away from the game and then check to see how modders addressed those issues, and jump back in.
If I were to describe your game to a friend, though, I'd say it's a mix between X and Distant Worlds. Which is great, heh.

UI:
I don't feel particularly smart to give a lot of good pointers. But now that I'm over the initial weirdness of playing around with something new, I'd currently point out these:
- In the Ship Equipment screen, the ship status group looks a bit weird, and (this WILL sound like nitpicking) the values have different capitalization: "cargo space" VS. "Jump Range", for instance.
- The Ship Orders panel on the Main Interface doesn't have much of a feedback when you click in an order. The cursor does change when you click to give an Attack order, but the same cursor is used for every order. This could make someone give wrong orders for not knowing what's currently selected. A custom icon for each order (small "red crosshair" in some corner of the cursor for the attack order, for instance), would grant better feedback and awareness.
- The Settings Menus use some sort of external (engine?) window. Making these menus using the same in-game theme would make it all look nicer. But I bet this one's somewhere on your issue list!
- Enabling the Galaxy Map to be draggable with the mouse would be cool. Not that of a big deal, though.

Saves and Hotkey Triggering:
Those are the only two issues that are driving me crazy. 

Try starting/loading a game, and when you're in-game, try to load (or quickload) any save.
To me, it sometimes breaks the game. What seems to be happening is that the current game is not cleared/unloaded, and loading the new game freezes the 'loop' (or something) - only some parts of the UI works.
I can't really point out how to reproduce this, because I see no pattern. It's just that sometimes when you load a save in-game, it doesn't work and forces you to exit the game completely and launch it again.

About the Hotkeys: I started bumping into an issue you may already know: typing in the UI triggers the hotkeys, even when selecting text/combo boxes (in trading or ship renaming, for instance).
When renaming a Equipment Preset this closes the screen when typing 'e', or you can give an accidental order, etc.

Other Issues & Suggestions - because someone has to be that boring dude.
There's always a high chance that the lead dev always got those things noted down, buut:

- Pointing Typos: "Transfert" at the Empire Assets screen, "Equipement Presets" at the Shipyard screen. "spotted in the vecinity" at pirate hunting missions.
- Audio issue: When I lower the music volume from 100%, the music doesn't play anymore. Same with the effect volume setting, which turns effects off completely.
- Could deselecting ships be more intuitive (like simply left clicking anywhere on-screen)? Sometimes I forget/don't notice I have some ship selected and end up giving accidental orders. Maybe there's a reason things are the way they are though, and I might be missing it. UPDATE: Apparently this is how it works when you have ships selected in the same sector as you, but when the selected ship is in another sector, you are forced to use minus on the numpad to deselect.
- There's no quick/intuitive way to set ships to Escort other ships (I might be missing it), and I think this may become a rather tedious task later in the game. This would streamline stuff for big empire builders I think, due to the sheer number of necessary escort tasks, and automated ships being free to go wherever they want. Which brings me to..
- It feels kind of weird that ships can go and do whatever they want. Do you plan on expanding the player-automated ships AI for customization? For instance, setting a trade range or sector blacklist would be great. Or, for scavangers, an option do not transport illegal stuff or something like that.
- Could the Galactic News and Journal be saved? When reloading a game, those news are cleared. A "Clear" button could be thrown in there too, heh.
- A small legend on the Statistics screen would be cool. I still have to check every faction individually to see which their color is.
- Event logging customization is nice! Especially if the logs become persistent I would ask to add another option on this screen, along with "Switch to location" one, is a "Pause" option. That way, if someone declares war on you or you get invaded, you can set it to switch the camera to the location and pause, which would be great given the quick nature of the game.
- Tracking bounties and targets feels impossible. Mission descriptions could point their location better, and a way to 'quick search' by sector name at the Galaxy Map would be great!
- This one is a more complex suggestion, but I'd love to see some sort of "planetary" interaction. Again, maybe this is already in and I haven't noticed, but being able to export and/or import goods from planets would be awesome. I never understood how on the X series, trillions of people inhabit planets, yet all the goods produced on space seem to never be exchanged between space and ground. One might argue that the Trade Stations in X do that, but we all know that's a lie.  Hahaha, but I'd love to see your "no magic economy" approach to that.


I think this is all I can think for now.
I haven't explored that much of the game yet, but I'm happy and interested with the core game. I think from all my suggestions, I only had one that would involve gameplay (the space/planet exchange).
The only things that really gets in the way are those bugs, but I haven't found anything gamebreaking.

Finally, when we're analysing stuff we forget the compliments. Props to your for the ease of automation and for all the work you already did. I'm pretty sure it's not easy.
But with proper polish and some graphical improvements I can totally see this on my Steam front page as a recommendation. 

[Whivy]

When i saw "Anarkis" i was like "damn... i know this from somewhere..." and yes, i played a lot of X3 sessions, using some of your mods.

I must say i really forward to this project, for a looooong time i was wondering why the hell isn't there a X3 game with a more strategy set, playing as a faction or a nation, with top view. Looks like you were asking yourself the same question heh ?

I tried it and while it looks very beta and ... hard to get into, it looks also promising. (i hope we will be able to start from a cleaner scenario, with like one sector for each nation, cause now i'm kinda lost and i don't like to play already spread out nation. I like to name every stuff and that everything is crystal clear in my mind you know ?)

Good luck with that project of yours which i will follow with pleasure and hard contained excitation.

[forsaken1111]

ptw

[jocan2003]

Hi,

I am the author of Unending Galaxy. It's nice to see my game mentioned in DF's board (a game that I love and which is ideal to play during compiling and self-testing time). If you have any question feel free to ask, It'll be my pleasure to answer.

-snipped-

Cheers,
SK

SerialKicked, long time no see, i gotta say, when i saw you leave the X front for creating a game, i was sad because you mod was awesome and i really miss them, i hope one day you might hit Rebirth but your game man... wow really. And now to see you here, well world is small hehe.

[EsKa]

@jocan2003:  Hey !

Thanks. Yeah it's a bit sad for X:R. But Egosoft kinda asked for it, I am not even sure it's possible to code something similar to pirate guild in X:R. From what I see, I am far from being the only one to have jumped ship: most of the modders I know stuck to X3:TC/AP or moved to greener pastures. I can't really go back anyway, as much as modding was fun while it lasted, I can't really make a living out of it and I don't have time for both anymore

@Whivy:

Thank you. And yes it can be a bit overwhelming at first, that's mainly due to the lack of an in-game tutorial to be honest and general lack of tool-tips. That said, once you get the hang of it, you'll realize that there's not that much to assimilate.

. (i hope we will be able to start from a cleaner scenario, with like one sector for each nation, cause now i'm kinda lost and i don't like to play already spread out nation. I like to name every stuff and that everything is crystal clear in my mind you know ?)

There's an option when starting a new game (initial expansion, iirc) where everyone only start with a single solar system (at least in the default galaxia map), it's called "map default". A lot of starting options are being added right now to prepare for procedurally generated maps. But honestly, I would only recommend this setting if you're playing the "colonization" type starting scenario in order to make your empire right now. Factions expand quite slowly, and having only a single system per faction will make for a very, very empty world to explore.

I wouldn't recommend to get to the empire building stuff from the get go, that's way too much information to process for a first game imho (and incidentally the online 'empire tutorial' is fairly outdated).


@Gabeux:

First, thank you for taking so much time writing this invaluable post, and also for the X3/Distant Worlds comparison, two games I spent an awful lot of time playing. That's the best compliment you could give

I am not going to retrace all suggestions point by point, I agree with most of it, and the "nitpicking" parts were extremely useful (as the saying goes, the devil is in the details). So no worries if I don't cover a particular point, it's just that I agree and will try to implement the idea.

Anyway,

The Ship Orders panel on the Main Interface doesn't have much of a feedback when you click in an order. The cursor does change when you click to give an Attack order, but the same cursor is used for every order. This could make someone give wrong orders for not knowing what's currently selected. A custom icon for each order (small "red crosshair" in some corner of the cursor for the attack order, for instance), would grant better feedback and awareness.

Yes giving orders definitively need more visual (and audio) feedback.
It's planned but I just hadn't the time to get around it yet.

The Settings Menus use some sort of external (engine?) window. Making these menus using the same in-game theme would make it all look nicer. But I bet this one's somewhere on your issue list!

This one deserve an explanation I guess. I know it's a bit off-putting but it saves me some development time as the same windows (and code) can be reused freely between the launcher and the game itself. In all likelihood, both windows will be integrated and themed properly in the final release.

"save/reload issues"

It seems to be a common theme amongst beta testers. You are likely right on the reason why. I have probably overlooked something when clearing the previous game from memory, hence the random nature of the crash. I am not sure why I didn't caught it myself as I spent 2 days optimizing loading times recently. It's likely some last minute changes I didn't fully test.

About the Hotkeys: I started bumping into an issue you may already know: typing in the UI triggers the hotkeys, even when selecting text/combo boxes (in trading or ship renaming, for instance). When renaming a Equipment Preset this closes the screen when typing 'e', or you can give an accidental order, etc.

Oh god, yeah I forgot about this one. Menus, depending if you can enter text inside or not, should disable hot-keys. Well, at least there's code for it, but as you illustrate, I have yet to implement it in all the relevant menus. Will fix asap.

Audio issue: When I lower the music volume from 100%, the music doesn't play anymore. Same with the effect volume setting, which turns effects off completely.

I noticed that, except that it still kinda works: 80% is zero and 100% is well, 100. I'll fix it as well.

here's no quick/intuitive way to set ships to Escort other ships (I might be missing it), and I think this may become a rather tedious task later in the game. This would streamline stuff for big empire builders I think, due to the sheer number of necessary escort tasks, and automated ships being free to go wherever they want.

Well, you can still select your escort ships and right click the ship to be escorted in the sector map. True, it can be troublesome if you want to provide escorts for every civilian ship you produce. Maybe I can add some production order to the shipyard to that effect, or some kind of setting to AI packages (back on that further down) I am not really sure atm.

That said, I am not sure why you'd need that many escort ships. For free traders, sure, preventing the loss of 200k+ credits worth of goods if a good enough incentive, but you don't really want hundreds of them as they are tied to solar systems and having more than 1 or 2 per system will hurt income. Dock traders are free and not worth the expense. With miners you can secure asteroid fields with a patrol to roughly the same effect. As for scavengers, well, yeah they die a lot, indeed (heading head first in a hot conflict zone isn't a safe activity) but I am not sure escort ships will help them much in that scenario.

Just a side note, basically any ship can run any AI. All hail the might mining battleship :p (I am exaggerating, but cruisers can make sturdy mining and trading vessels, i'll probably add some cruiser variants with better cargo capacity soon).

It feels kind of weird that ships can go and do whatever they want. Do you plan on expanding the player-automated ships AI for customization? For instance, setting a trade range or sector blacklist would be great. Or, for scavangers, an option do not transport illegal stuff or something like that.

Free traders don't exactly go wherever they please. Change their home sector to one located in a solar system you want to trade in and the ship will restrict itself to said solar system. It should even do that automatically granted you launch the command with the ship already in a solar system. Same goes with miners, if I recall correctly, they should only mine in a 1 sector radius around their home-sector (not sure it's still the case after the last code optimization pass, I'll double check).

Scavengers and raiders are a weird bunch of AI modules, they mostly are there for role play purpose in the pirate starting scenario rather than servicing any real purpose. Scavengers can make a tiny bit of money before dying, sometimes they get lucky and reap a small fortune, that's the game's equivalent of flipping a coin. I guess that a raider with a large escort can be a pain in the *** of other factions but nothing major. I am still hesitant about letting these two accessible.

From what I gather here, AI packages really deserve more menu space and in-game info than the current small drop down menu. They'll get their own tab with appropriate help / info panel. I will add specific settings: hiring escort ships could fit very well here ; I will allow to tune their zone of action and if we allow them to use warp gates or not. I won't add sector black listing, though, as I'd rather give them the tools to evaluate the danger by themselves.

Tracking bounties and targets feels impossible. Mission descriptions could point their location better, and a way to 'quick search' by sector name at the Galaxy Map would be great!

Ohh the quick search is a very good idea indeed, will do.

The issue with mission briefings is that the text is generated at some point, after which the ship may very well have moved elsewhere. Changing the text in real time isn't really an option due to some code limitations. Imho, what's really needed regarding "kill" missions is a function to center the map on the target's current location. There's already a targeting reticule on the map, but given the galaxy' size, it tend to be pretty difficult to find.

This one is a more complex suggestion, but I'd love to see some sort of "planetary" interaction. Again, maybe this is already in and I haven't noticed, but being able to export and/or import goods from planets would be awesome. I never understood how on the X series, trillions of people inhabit planets, yet all the goods produced on space seem to never be exchanged between space and ground. One might argue that the Trade Stations in X do that, but we all know that's a lie.  Hahaha, but I'd love to see your "no magic economy" approach to that.

That's more or less in the works. Not sure it'll be ready for 1.0 because it's a big one, but still. Right now planetary colonies already provide taxes, ship parts, manpower (military cap) and have an impact on what factory types can be supported there. So, already, my planets aren't only just nice looking backdrops. They are the most important thing to protect as an empire.

Hopefully, next version each colony type will have its own import/export list of products that will influence the buying/selling price at trade stations.

Later on, morale will come into play as well. Colonies will require specific products to increase happiness, a factor that will be influenced by war weariness and likely other things I have yet to decide. Let the happiness go too low and the colony won't provide its bonuses (taxes,..), let it go to zero and it may rebel and spawn hostile ships. It's not set in stones, and that's definitively a post 1.0 feature.

The only things that really gets in the way are those bugs, but I haven't found anything gamebreaking.

Finally, when we're analysing stuff we forget the compliments. Props to your for the ease of automation and for all the work you already did. I'm pretty sure it's not easy. But with proper polish and some graphical improvements I can totally see this on my Steam front page as a recommendation.

Thank you very much (Steam greenlight is indeed planned further down the road) !

(about graphics, don't hold your breath, I am limited to what can be used for free. Most of the gfx here come from AI:Wars with some additional ships from 3rd parties. My graphical skills are minimal at best, even if there's still a few effects and improvements I am slowly implementing).

Cheers,
SK.

Edit: Oh, forgot a bit about deselecting ships. Yes it's still a bit fiddly / inconsistent. I'll fix that. As a side note, I tend to assign my 'mouse 4' button (thumb) to the 'deselect all' command, it's pretty handy.

[Gabeux]

Woa, nice. I'm pretty sure you loved the same games as me, so I'm on the same page as you.
When I wrote that post, I had like..6 ships, and was struggling to keep them safe.
Now I'm mid-game, 10 millions, and just lost a whole fleet of 80 ships trying to save the galaxy. More on that on a later post, when Galaxia War I ends.
Which means I got a little experience in most (yet not all) parts of the game now. 

I'll just reply to the points that I may have derped, as I agree with you, and beforehand I'd like to say that I understand how hard the development must be. It's a 1 man crew and the scope of the game is big.

Ship Escorts:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

here's no quick/intuitive way to set ships to Escort other ships (I might be missing it), and I think this may become a rather tedious task later in the game. This would streamline stuff for big empire builders I think, due to the sheer number of necessary escort tasks, and automated ships being free to go wherever they want.

Well, you can still select your escort ships and right click the ship to be escorted in the sector map. True, it can be troublesome if you want to provide escorts for every civilian ship you produce. Maybe I can add some production order to the shipyard to that effect, or some kind of setting to AI packages (back on that further down) I am not really sure atm.

That said, I am not sure why you'd need that many escort ships. For free traders, sure, preventing the loss of 200k+ credits worth of goods if a good enough incentive, but you don't really want hundreds of them as they are tied to solar systems and having more than 1 or 2 per system will hurt income. Dock traders are free and not worth the expense. With miners you can secure asteroid fields with a patrol to roughly the same effect. As for scavengers, well, yeah they die a lot, indeed (heading head first in a hot conflict zone isn't a safe activity) but I am not sure escort ships will help them much in that scenario.

Just a side note, basically any ship can run any AI. All hail the might mining battleship :p (I am exaggerating, but cruisers can make sturdy mining and trading vessels, i'll probably add some cruiser variants with better cargo capacity soon).

Your idea of an Escort AI package would be really great - there's many ways for you to tackle it I guess. One non-trivial way that makes me feel happy inside (lol) would be to take this idea along with your intent to make the AI Packages "smart" (threat evaluation). Escort Ships belong to a "roster" and when a Trader or Miner (or Scavanger, but we know that's suicide  ) is going somewhere they evaluate as dangerous, they request an Escort from this roster. This could work along with your concept of Civilian Ships, since we have Civilian Bounty Hunters, maybe civs could apply for Escort missions? But now I'm getting too much of a X4 genre and automation fanboy here.

But to address the "Why?", it's because Miners get easily picked off atm, and they sometimes jump to weird places.
I also noticed that they have a hard time fleeing when getting attacked, but I'll list this after this post segment. 

And I'm yet to test Cruiser Mining. I need to save the galaxy first though.

AI Package Sector Blacklisting/Threat Evaluation

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It feels kind of weird that ships can go and do whatever they want. Do you plan on expanding the player-automated ships AI for customization? For instance, setting a trade range or sector blacklist would be great. Or, for scavangers, an option do not transport illegal stuff or something like that.

Free traders don't exactly go wherever they please. Change their home sector to one located in a solar system you want to trade in and the ship will restrict itself to said solar system. It should even do that automatically granted you launch the command with the ship already in a solar system. Same goes with miners, if I recall correctly, they should only mine in a 1 sector radius around their home-sector (not sure it's still the case after the last code optimization pass, I'll double check).

Scavengers and raiders are a weird bunch of AI modules, they mostly are there for role play purpose in the pirate starting scenario rather than servicing any real purpose. Scavengers can make a tiny bit of money before dying, sometimes they get lucky and reap a small fortune, that's the game's equivalent of flipping a coin. I guess that a raider with a large escort can be a pain in the *** of other factions but nothing major. I am still hesitant about letting these two accessible.

From what I gather here, AI packages really deserve more menu space and in-game info than the current small drop down menu. They'll get their own tab with appropriate help / info panel. I will add specific settings: hiring escort ships could fit very well here ; I will allow to tune their zone of action and if we allow them to use warp gates or not. I won't add sector black listing, though, as I'd rather give them the tools to evaluate the danger by themselves.

I agree completely. Sector blacklisting is mostly a dirty solution IMHO, and the time to implement this could be well used improving the AI.

About the Traders and Miners being tied to a Solar System, maybe due to my low situational awareness since it was my first time playing, I may have failed to notice a few things happening.
But, I noticed that Miners will mine in the closest spot to them in some situations (even when designating a resource spot), and I pretty sure I saw both Miners and Traders selling their goods anywhere in the map. Maybe Traders/Miners are tied to buying/mining things on their designated sector(s), and selling wherever they want?

I agree with Scavanger and Raider weirdness (I haven't used Raiders yet though), but the only issue is with the suicidal nature of Scavangers. However, it's cool that you let players use it, and I think that if you use a fast ship (like an Explorer), maybe the scavanging will become WAY more profitable and safer than using bigger ships.

And expanding the AI Packages like that would be great. This would take a long time I guess, especially if you add customization to their orders. Like having Scavangers only get legal goods, or only get Equipment or Goods. This would be really awesome, but each package has their own set of possible customizations, which would give you a lot of work 

Target/Bounty Tracking

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Tracking bounties and targets feels impossible. Mission descriptions could point their location better, and a way to 'quick search' by sector name at the Galaxy Map would be great!

Ohh the quick search is a very good idea indeed, will do.

The issue with mission briefings is that the text is generated at some point, after which the ship may very well have moved elsewhere. Changing the text in real time isn't really an option due to some code limitations. Imho, what's really needed regarding "kill" missions is a function to center the map on the target's current location. There's already a targeting reticule on the map, but given the galaxy' size, it tend to be pretty difficult to find.

Derp, I had no idea about the target reticule. 
The search and centering will help a lot though!

Planet Stuff

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This one is a more complex suggestion, but I'd love to see some sort of "planetary" interaction. Again, maybe this is already in and I haven't noticed, but being able to export and/or import goods from planets would be awesome. I never understood how on the X series, trillions of people inhabit planets, yet all the goods produced on space seem to never be exchanged between space and ground. One might argue that the Trade Stations in X do that, but we all know that's a lie.  Hahaha, but I'd love to see your "no magic economy" approach to that.

That's more or less in the works. Not sure it'll be ready for 1.0 because it's a big one, but still. Right now planetary colonies already provide taxes, ship parts, manpower (military cap) and have an impact on what factory types can be supported there. So, already, my planets aren't only just nice looking backdrops. They are the most important thing to protect as an empire.

Hopefully, next version each colony type will have its own import/export list of products that will influence the buying/selling price at trade stations.

Later on, morale will come into play as well. Colonies will require specific products to increase happiness, a factor that will be influenced by war weariness and likely other things I have yet to decide. Let the happiness go too low and the colony won't provide its bonuses (taxes,..), let it go to zero and it may rebel and spawn hostile ships. It's not set in stones, and that's definitively a post 1.0 feature.

When I posted the suggestion I was completely on the early game. Now that I have ~3 planets (and conquered 2 only to lose them later), I get what you're saying. 
I really like the planets being the ultimate strategic asset, and all the improvements you've got planned for them is exactly what I was suggesting.
Looking at the interface once I started empire building, I had this intuition that you probably had more planned to the planets. It'll be very cool.

GFX

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(about graphics, don't hold your breath, I am limited to what can be used for free. Most of the gfx here come from AI:Wars with some additional ships from 3rd parties. My graphical skills are minimal at best, even if there's still a few effects and improvements I am slowly implementing).

I may have been very abstract on my graphical suggestion.
But I like the graphics - yet I'm not the best person to talk about it, since I like to play DF without tilesets/in ASCII  - and I usually worry more about the 'feeling' they provide than the actual graphical prowess or whatever.
What I meant was more in the ways of effects, I think. Like thruster effects, or background random things, a bit 'cooler' (?) weapon effects, or some particle stuff to make people go "ohhh partikelz".
Not that necessary, but I think it's a thing that would ease your way into greenlight. Because seriously, unnecessary effects on all things makes everyone loves a game nowadays on those mainstream venues, hahaha - I'm not suggesting that though. That's cheating. 

-
New Pointers:
I had a few things in mind, but I may have forgotten most of them, derp.
I'll put into a spoiler before someone hammers me for this wall of text.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- [Issue] No way to manually build warpgates
I didn't find a way, at least. After I manually built all the 'industries' and had to go to war, I turned on the Automated Station Building and my Builder happily built a gate automatically. I could feel the AI despising me. 

- [Issue] Bounty Hunters and Police Ships cause random trouble and get bounty on their heads from any faction
This is probably due to those ships pursuing enemy ships (which is cool!). I could not observe this happening directly, though, but I think they might miss a shot and hit a faction-owned station and get some bounty on themselves.

- [Issue] Factions full of Hate
Hey, I played Elite, so I know that a whole Galaxy might follow Zero Tolerance policies, but at least warn us about it! Joking aside, you can easily get murdered by hitting faction-owned stations accidentally - I think the Friendly Fire settings only work for ships (i.e. untargeted friendly stations actually take the hits). I also think it's awesome to have Friendly Fire settings given that the game is 2D and it's easy to murder non-enemy stuff.
It would be nice if faction-owned Police Forces were to contact you about small fines (but go lethal if your bounty is too high) or request you to drop the illegal cargo before murdering you.
I say this mostly due to the fast nature of the game, really, because sometimes you don't even know why they hate you so much. And also because it would look cool. 

- [Issue] Ships don't flee.
Even when setting Firing to disabled, ships (like Miners and Traders) that get attacked just stay in place and die. 

- [Bug] Order buttons aren't working - M for move or K for kill, etc. Changing the assigned keys also doesn't work.
I didn't test this extensively for workarounds or probable causes, but it doesn't work..or I'm missing something.

As a closing note, it's funny how some games have a big scope (which means a really big development scope), but due to the simplicity of the user interface, control scheme or overall graphics, people might take it for a simple game at first glance.
It was not my case, since I knew it was being developed by a X modder. What I mean is that following this line of "simple to the player, hard to the developer" you can easily make a lot of people happy.

[jocan2003]

I tend to shoot something when i right click a target for esscort, i let go of a missile or 2 then whole sector goes for my hide and die...

[EsKa]

@jocan2003:

I should have been more specific, my bad. To give orders to your ships, I'd strongly suggest to use the sector map (tab), a mode in which you cannot fire directly for precisely this reason

Oh, apparently in the sector map, you should click a tiny bit top-left of the ship's icon, I may have messed up their center point calculation when adding rotating icons recently (bug already fixed in my in-house version, so i tend to forgot about it)

@Gabeux: Yes, looks that way Let me guess, you tried to go toes to toes against the AI Core and saw countless fighters an frigates getting fried by their beam-o-doom (It kinda happens a lot to new players) in an instant ? If so, that's per design ^^

Anyway, i'll try to cut down the topic the the main point as well.

Ship Escorts:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Your idea of an Escort AI package would be really great - there's many ways for you to tackle it I guess. One non-trivial way that makes me feel happy inside (lol) would be to take this idea along with your intent to make the AI Packages "smart" (threat evaluation). Escort Ships belong to a "roster" and when a Trader or Miner (or Scavanger, but we know that's suicide  ) is going somewhere they evaluate as dangerous, they request an Escort from this roster. This could work along with your concept of Civilian Ships, since we have Civilian Bounty Hunters, maybe civs could apply for Escort missions? But now I'm getting too much of a X4 genre and automation fanboy here. [...]

What I was suggesting here was a bit more straightforward, though. You set the amount of escort ships and class wanted in the (yet to be designed) AI setup tab. If you have a shipyard, escort ships will be (re)built from there. If not, NPC escort ships will be hired for a given cost/hour at a nearby, neutral/friendly, military base.

But, yes I am toying with the idea of jobs/tasks/mission that relevant ships would take and try to complete automatically. Something akin to how DF fortress mode works, but there's a few drawbacks that make me a bit unsure (fully explaining this would take pages and would probably get OOT of this particular thread). I will probably try that in a limited fashion first and see if it can be expanded to escort and other 'temporary' jobs. That's a story for after the 1.0 release, though, too many things to finalize already. :p

Pathing, Miners, Traders, AI Packages

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I agree completely. Sector blacklisting is mostly a dirty solution IMHO, and the time to implement this could be well used improving the AI. About the Traders and Miners being tied to a Solar System, maybe due to my low situational awareness since it was my first time playing, I may have failed to notice a few things happening.
But, I noticed that Miners will mine in the closest spot to them in some situations (even when designating a resource spot), and I pretty sure I saw both Miners and Traders selling their goods anywhere in the map. Maybe Traders/Miners are tied to buying/mining things on their designated sector(s), and selling wherever they want?

Also there's already code to avoid pathing through war torn, hostile, and pirate sectors. It's not used as often as it should be because of CPU costs. Things will be improved when the dust settles a bit. Duly noted for miners, the limit got probably accidentally removed when I did my last optimization pass. I'll double check free traders, but from what I remember the only possible case where they could go out of the assigned solar system is when they do an emergency jump to flee from hostiles (or if I messed up the map design itself with 2 clusters belonging to the same system).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I agree with Scavanger and Raider weirdness (I haven't used Raiders yet though), but the only issue is with the suicidal nature of Scavangers. However, it's cool that you let players use it, and I think that if you use a fast ship (like an Explorer), maybe the scavanging will become WAY more profitable and safer than using bigger ships.

Scavengers' code is probably the oldest module i wrote and it kinda shows, I am likely to give it another go sooner or later.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And expanding the AI Packages like that would be great. This would take a long time I guess, especially if you add customization to their orders. Like having Scavangers only get legal goods, or only get Equipment or Goods. This would be really awesome, but each package has their own set of possible customizations, which would give you a lot of work 

That's a lot of UI to add, yes, it's not necessarily complicated code, but it's long, boring one which is often much worst. I am probably restrict the additions to what i said earlier (common settings working for everyone like escort and zone of action) at first, and expand on that base later on.

GFX

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I may have been very abstract on my graphical suggestion.
But I like the graphics - yet I'm not the best person to talk about it, since I like to play DF without tilesets/in ASCII  - and I usually worry more about the 'feeling' they provide than the actual graphical prowess or whatever.
What I meant was more in the ways of effects, I think. Like thruster effects, or background random things, a bit 'cooler' (?) weapon effects, or some particle stuff to make people go "ohhh partikelz".
Not that necessary, but I think it's a thing that would ease your way into greenlight. Because seriously, unnecessary effects on all things makes everyone loves a game nowadays on those mainstream venues, hahaha - I'm not suggesting that though. That's cheating. 

That and naming it 'galaxy simulator 2015' I guess :p
But seriously, point taken, I am working on improving the rendering a bit with each version (I tend to delete older screenshots but if you can still find them in my older blog posts and there's already a world of difference). That said, my custom built engine is a bit sluggish graphic wise, adding particle effects and stuff can prove to be more than it can chew, we'll see

Issues

I had a few things in mind, but I may have forgotten most of them, derp.
I'll put into a spoiler before someone hammers me for this wall of text. [snip]

Thanks, I'll fix that (you're filling my to-do list at an alarming rate, you know?) asap.

Just a couple notes. Police shouldn't get bounty at all (like military), it's an oversight. Bounty hunters, on the other hand, not so sure, it kinda make sense that 2 enemy factions would put bounties on each other's hunters. Dunno, I'll to compile some stats to see if BH on BH battle are that problematic in the grand scheme of things.

About the "factions are full of hate" part, Yeah FF settings works only for ships at the moment, dunno why i wrote it that way in the first place, consider this one fixed. Police ships, even already hostile, can be talked down (it's imperfect as each police wing will have to be talked to if there's more than one targeting you) during the encounter, as I am not a big fan of popups and pausing the game. I may change that around, though.

What you experienced seems to be a "call for help" cascade. You hit a station by accident, it calls some ships for help, which, in turn will call other ships for help. And soon enough, every military and police in the sector wants you dead. That's something fairly hard to balance properly as there's so many factors to take into consideration, but I am working on it (that's why simply leaving the area tend to calm everybody down almost immediately right now).

Finally, about order keyboard shortcuts. Yeah, I knew this one was going to crop up sooner or later. Simply put, they don't work the same way buttons do (the buttons are a very recent addition and it's not yet merged with the hotkeys). In instance, the [K]ill shortcut works as follow: Click an enemy, select some of your ship (both should be selected), then press K for your ships to attack it. Basically the shortcuts skip the 'select target' part and assume you've already done that. Dunno about [M]ove, not even sure it should even exist anymore.

As a closing note, it's funny how some games have a big scope (which means a really big development scope), but due to the simplicity of the user interface, control scheme or overall graphics, people might take it for a simple game at first glance.
It was not my case, since I knew it was being developed by a X modder. What I mean is that following this line of "simple to the player, hard to the developer" you can easily make a lot of people happy.

I don't know about simple UI (don't forget you're used to DF and X :p) but I am trying my best to make it as simple as possible given the scope. The hardest part, that I underestimated at first, was to find systems that would work no matter how big or small the player wants to  be. And, yes, it's a big project code wise, 1 year already, with the last 4 months in full time, but it's getting there, the last few weeks especially. Thanks

Cheers,
SK.

[Gabeux]

Yes, looks that way Let me guess, you tried to go toes to toes against the AI Core and saw countless fighters an frigates getting fried by their beam-o-doom (It kinda happens a lot to new players) in an instant ? If so, that's per design ^^

Actually, I was saving the galaxy from the Neo SPQR, while being completely satisfied that the Xenon AI Core [] was keeping it to its own sectors.
The Neo SPQR war was very fun and I liked how, when it ended, the faction went from being the biggest, mightiest one in the galaxy to a crippled economy, bankrupt, no-shipyard minor faction. My builders slowly ate away through most of their territory, and it's awesome that I can blow up his miners/traders and they don't have money to replace them. Or the builders. 

Eventually, when I had half the map, yet my economy was rather weak/slow, the AI Core decided to come visiting and now I'm too scared to launch the game again.
You, sir, are crazy.

Spoiler: Goodbye Everyone (click to show/hide)

I agree with your replies and your need to remain "on schedule" and properly prioritize things, or build a simple base feature and expand on it later.

That and naming it 'galaxy simulator 2015' I guess :p

Hahahaha, but man, why would you want to be rich anyway? 

Thanks, I'll fix that (you're filling my to-do list at an alarming rate, you know?) asap.

It's a dwarven trait, I guess. Developers should brace for impact when entering the realms of B12, 

Finally, about order keyboard shortcuts. Yeah, I knew this one was going to crop up sooner or later. Simply put, they don't work the same way buttons do (the buttons are a very recent addition and it's not yet merged with the hotkeys). In instance, the [K]ill shortcut works as follow: Click an enemy, select some of your ship (both should be selected), then press K for your ships to attack it. Basically the shortcuts skip the 'select target' part and assume you've already done that. Dunno about [M]ove, not even sure it should even exist anymore.

True dat. I noticed that yesterday, and forgot to edit my post and remove it. It's a bit counter-intuitive and dangerous I'd say (I made my fleet murder one of it's own Battleships), but with the tutorial later on it might be less dangerous. I'd prefer if it worked like the orders panel, though, but I'm not sure if there's a reason for it not to be. EDIT: Derp, you're going to merge the behaviors, I see.

Issues
The only new issues I've noticed and would like to point out are ones that are easy to notice, but unfortunately I couldn't make sense of what was happening at the time, so I apologize in advance for being abstract (which sometimes can make the problem harder to detect/solve).

UG's Tantrum Spirals - Actually, Loyalty cascades (a.k.a. real weird stuff happening between player-owned ships):
I think if you (or you AI Controlled ships) accidentally fire on your own property, some nearby police/military will start shooting you/your ship.
I've seen really weird battles between my own ships, I ended up laughing as it made no sense. I think the first ship that fires at a station triggers nearby ships to kill it, which might trigger other nearby ships around to kill the killers. It actually might not be as bad as it sounds, and I couldn't understand those skirmishes, but something weird goes on.
It shouldn't be too hard to spot with a medium empire, just sit nearby a player-owned warpgate and you'll see some fun stuff  .

UG's Interspecies' Tantrum Spirals - Similar to the issue above, but with player-owned vs. faction-owned ships:
It MIGHT be Bounty Hunters trolling around. Sometimes a player-faction ship will fire at/pursuit a npc-faction ship, [probably] into their territory. Then, nearby npc-faction ships will come after it into your territory, attack the offending ship, and get killed by nearby player-owned ships. Which might trigger nearby faction-ships into the mix again, sometimes in short and kind of cute (in a deathly way) loops.
Long story short, this eventually causes wars.
Even though I'm not sure about the "pursuit" part (since I don't know if AI ships follow each other through sectors yet), something is definitely going on enough to make a faction slowly hate you.
Again, I was dealing with too much at the time to make sense of what was going on, but it didn't look like it should've been happening.

For these issues, I'd make the following suggestions (that you probably have something similar planned)
- A way to configure Friend-or-Foe settings (X again) - Mostly unnecessary, though, but gives power to the players  .
- A way to clear a ship's enemy list/target - Clearing a ship's orders don't clear their target list (I'm just assuming there's some sort of enemy list).
- Maybe not counting Civilian Ships' actions as Player-Faction actions - It feels a bit awkward to be hated by a faction due to the actions of an AI Civilian (I'm not sure if it currently counts, since so much was going on that forced me to work on the assumption that only Bounty Hunters would be the ones with the ability to cause such trouble).

Thanks. I tried to keep it short  Probably the next posts will be shorter since I'm taking a break after the AI Core incident.

[Paul]

Interesting game, I like the way you're going with the economy and ability to go from individual ship -> empire. One thing I notice that's not ideal is the transitions between sectors and combat.

Starting as a bounty hunter and going after bounties is fun up until you get a ship that's evenly matched or a bit stronger than yours. Then you get their shields low and they run off to a sector edge, at which point it's very difficult to kill them. They hug the border where you can't see them or effectively shoot at them (the UI elements get in the way) and trying to fly near results in a zone transition for you, which leaves them behind to recharge their shields and breaks your target lock on them. They don't actually zone through when they run, they just run around the edge.

I'm really not sure what the best way to handle this is other than changing up the way zone transitions work. Is it possible to make it so that your view can scroll past the edge of the zone, with a little line or something for the border? Even if it doesn't show what's in the next zone over it would be a quick fix for the issue where you can't see or shoot at your opponent - and it might make flying more intuitive if the screen stays centered on your ship even near edges.

Obviously making some form of seamless transition would be better, but I expect that would be much more difficult to implement.