Ok, some first impressions for this one.
Tutorials.... this is confusing. It hits the point of "okay, here's your abilities now" and then just.... stops. There isnt anything after that, yet half the interface is still missing. There's no messages telling me what to do next. I tried attacking pirates, I tried doing a dispatch.... nothing. I'll probably have to restart at this point, honestly, since I cant go forward while missing half the stuff.
Smuggling missions still are an issue. My main problem with them remains the same.... they're just too tedious to deal with in a "safe" fashion. Previously, I would use abilities to make clearing away the 20 zillion targets in the way take a more sane amount of time, but.... doing it with JUST weapons takes forever. There's just too many THINGS, and as long as the various lance turrets exist, it's very risky to get anywhere near those. Hell, the missile turrets are bad enough; get too many of those firing at you and you HAVE to change position, which usually means rolling around to the other side of the mess, a process which takes way too long.
Currently, for me at least, these missions involve no tactics: I save before hand, and then just slam straight into the core of the mess. I dont even bother firing, just crash right into it. Oddly this has yet to not work, but it's all luck... if even ONE missile turret is in the way (and I cant tell the things apart whatsoever), it's over in an instant. I dont have the patience for any other approach, it just takes too long. I would have to spend WAY too much time maneuvering entirely around the blasted probes, over and over again, for it to work.
New players are going to look at these missions and probably be a bit too daunted by them.... all those turrets! And there is no such thing as a real hole in these defenses. Some of which are just outright deadly if they manage to get a strong hit on you (like the missile ones). It's even more daunting if you find out where all of their ranges are. Looks like a horrible red blob if you look at them all at once. AND there's zillions of small ships everywhere. I dont think there IS another type of mission that's more imposing than what these look like, actual difficulty not really mattering here. And these arent after doing like 5 others or something... these are the only two I did, period. Typically I do exactly two of these each time, to get a couple of races going, and then I'm tired of them after that.
Not to mention, doing them without the engine/shield/weapons thing ALSO makes it take longer. I'd prefer to have the ability to up the weapons so I have real range and power, which can make some things take less time, but I cannot do that.
Beyond this, I havent tested yet. I've started over without the tutorials and done the blasted smuggling, and will resume testing from there.
I did notice two things though to point out: 1, the descriptions on the planet stats, public order and all of them, are much better. It's alot more clear as to what these do. And 2, the different resources, THOSE are still confusing as all heck. I didn't know what they did before, I dont know what they do now, aside from that outposts need some to be built. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that they do have more purpose, or they wouldnt be there, but... these need alot more explaining. They're extremely vague right now, and it makes any actions involving them seem kinda pointless because you have no idea what it will even do.
Oh, and the event listing doesnt happen during the early tutorial stuff.... that bit is confusing. Doing a dispatch mission it was very clear that SOMETHING was happening, but I couldnt see what any of it was.
