Ok, I'm late to the party here, hadnt played in awhile, but this RCI change looks like it might fix the core problem I had with the game (which is why I hadnt messed with it in awhile).
A couple of things:
1. Not being able to set the number of months for a dispatch makes things REALLY confusing. I cannot tell how much something-or-other I'll gain/lose or whatever for how many months. This means I'm frequently going to be saving before doing one every single time, and possibly reloading frequently when the numbers dont go in a way that makes sense. It doesnt help that some of these are listing changes per DAY.... This one needs fixing badly.
2. The severity of various things seems to have been changed, but I had a 'plague of locusts" happen which made all of the RCI values go totally berserk. Aside from being utterly unfixable or having any way of doing anything about it, it also doesnt make a whole lot of sense.... I like to think that a spacefaring race could maybe possibly defend themselves at least a little better from insects of all things...
3. Gaining credits from non-pirate-related activities can be.... hard. If you're not mining materials that you may or may not have something resembling a use for, you're probably not getting much credit. This feels really grindy (particularly because it tends not to have a purpose that isnt JUST the credits) and seems to seriously be the only viable way to get credits as all. Allowing a given race to colonize all of their moons is a very bad idea right now. The only other source is rescuing pilots and doing exchanges, but of course this doesnt work with races that loathe you.
There's also missions, I know, but those arent really constant options, they're decided on and brought up entirely by the game engine, so I'm not listing them as a viable source.
4. This had been bugging me for awhile before, but the "smuggle spacefaring tech" missions need a rework. Beating these is purely a matter of the RNG. Either there will be a possible route, or there wont be, and there's nothing that can be done about this. And even when there is, many times it's only visible to those players that know EXACTLY where the hit radius is around those scanner ships. *I* can do it easily, when a route is available, but it's likely frustrating or seemingly insurmountable for some as it'll usually appear to be an impenetrable wall. The nasty bit is that you really rather need the credits from doing a couple of these to get you started. After two races are spacefaring, these become unbeatable. Or at least they're unbeatable on Misery, I'm not sure about the lower difficulties. On Misery if you hit the scan radius of just one of those things you ARE dead within a couple more turns no matter how fast or how shielded you are.
Beyond that, need more time with it. Balance is clearly going to be very different here. Aside from the Planet Wrecking Locusts of Doom, it's got a good start so far.
Also I just found a pirate ship with the very intimidating name of "Bathtub". What.
