My compliment to the developers,
It's rare to see game working on novel approach, I'm a long time backer and I still reommend this Early-Access game

But we don't make a good game out of praise, so here is a feedback about the weakest aspect of the project.
Afraid it come with embedded suggestion, nothing I can do about it.



The early part suffer the most from the lack of UI for now.
The players don't have a good way to track
- what they should be doing,
- what they were doing (tracking where you have to go would be nicer with a longer description of any important clue)
- what they just read and accidentally removed
- what ship is actually neutral, friendly, or enemy.

The controls can be improved :
- It need the ability to setup AZERTY keyboard for every buttons. This is painful to have to learn how to write text in English because you need to switch everytime you pilot.
- selecting your crew is counter intuitive
- there is no way to chose the weapons/missile you want to fire.

SUGGESTION: also use number key to activate/deactivate the weapons. Or weapon-group as part of the design.

Also I wish I could remove the white line that follow the mouse.
SUGGESTION: put that line where the Mouse cursor is.

Making money however is pretty simple once we understand how the economy work. And that's a good thing. But the UI to show us where to buy and sell could be improved.

One big flaw:
We lack variety of weapons, defense and tactic with T1 ship.
SUGGESTION: give missiles much sooner, give a wider array of turret and weapons. Including the most basic laser. Give more variety of Armor against small/big/explosive projectiles (like reactive-armor that absorb missile explosion)



You have a very serious problem of progression & balance and travel is the core of it.

There is no way (FOR YOU DEVS) to control how many enemies a players is meant to face in a battle or where it happen (outside of plot-magic)

- the player can evade anything with Travel Drive
- the player can scout over everything and make blockade meaningless
- the ennemis will swarm you from hundred of kilometers away
&
- AI ship cannot trade like the player

IMHO you can have simple but very fundamental change.
I also recommend using the various drive & gate to "gate" the progression.

SUGGESTION: The goal is to make sure the player meet "properly sized fleet" at (more) specific area and isn't swarmed by all other ship of the solar system.

- Make the Higgs a "subspace" drive (you only see what your radar can see)
- Make "Higgs travel" easier to use by AI (and an antifrustration feature).
- Make a (small) module that ATTRACT all subspace ship toward it's center. (visible on radar)
Leave some leeway so the player can still run away using Travel Drive
- Make a (small) module that then act as the "SUBSPACE BLOCKADE" (visible on radar)

If I'm right the result should be this:
1) player going toward an objective will be sucked toward the interesting area,
2) player will fight with a single ship/fleet for balanced challenge
3) enemy blockade is now properly impassable
4) player own "blockade module" prevent (only) enemy from swarming him.
5) AI trading is now possible, and piracy become a game mechanic.

The SpaceGate stay the obvious shortcut,



As said earlier, you have a problem with how you guide the players and how preventing inadvertently spoiling the game experience.

Biggest problem :
- completing a mission too soon and making a few other look pointless or silly.
- getting invincible ship before getting the tools I needed to modify the other ship.

SUGGESTION: guide the player more, and bind the Capacity upgrade to Specific mission or goal. So the player can't get the best ship too soon and is encouraged to modify the ship sooner.

You also need failsafe in case a player doesn't get the technology he needed at the right time.

For exemple :
- I have reached "The_data" mission and got the missile_factory without the missiles storage.
- I got early a Charged Railgun which is basically a win-button as I can outrange all enemy.



- There isn't enough free-room to modify,
It discourage player from modfying and I end up only using the default "strong ship".
By the time you unlocked all schematic you already found a better spaceship.

- Bigger T2+ ship are ridiculously MINMAXED
They are sure impressive but they leave no room for the new features you add or for players.

- It's not obvious what a gun is good for. You need more UI to tell if a weapon is worth using and for what purpose (like anti-missile or anti-shield)

- SHIELD, I think there should be an Hard cap limit on how many shield-block you can put with each shield generator. It would serve both as an indicator of how many is "too much" and for balance. Shield booster would increase than amount.

SUGGESTION:
- Default design should be more crude, with more free space and flaws (that you cover by giving them a lot of support ship).
- I think turret track should have a smaller radius, you counter this simply by giving more module you want to use.


- Right now they don't balance well with quantity.
You either can't get through the enemy defense.
Or you can instantly destroying anything.

- Missiles need much tighter turn to make lateral launch viable, as gameplay goes they become pointless to use because all enemy will rush you.

- You should restrict their ability to lock to the short radar-range (same for drone)

- Flare against missiles would be nice for all the small ship who can't afford an anti-missile turret and the crew for it.



I think it's too early to comment on this.

SUGGESTION: make the alien slow down when hit by bullets, this will make weapon with wide spread more useful and if they are easy to kill, you can have bigger swarm



I think you should stop generating randomly Item and Armor. I make them feel extremely generic and disposable.