[UI] Suggestions of Mine

This game is sick. This game is dying. Darkorbit has a disease, and it's greed. The natural progression of the game is to advance the technology of your ship to higher levels, but after the very basic levels, that requires large, then very large, and then obscene amounts of Uridium. To get your hands on some of this currency you can do several things including boxing, killing aliens, building and completing galaxy gates. Every single path can be taken faster with a better ship, so this makes a quadratic effect-the longer you play the game the faster you can get to the next step. Boxing, killing aliens, building and completing galaxy gates; they're all good, fun concepts. However, the game is made so that they are meager tasks at best without Uridium to spare. Of course you can spend money and this problem is rectified.

Therein lies the problem. DarkOrbit is a game that has been tweaked to appeal to gamers who have a solid income and don't mind spending some money-and a minority of those don't mind spending a relatively considerable amount on the game. So, basically; DarkOrbit is a finely tuned money-earning machine that accepts only a minority of the gaming community. And it's very well done this way. However, BigPoint could get more money with a game that is less demanding of expense and more fun to play, via more players, because your average gamer does not have the money nor do they want to spend it on a game. But it looks like DarkOrbit has tried to add more fun without subtracting the currency dependency, and it isn't working. Bigpoint could get more profit by making the game less pay-to-win and more fun. The game has a very good concept: the player is a freelancing spaceship in an open universe, limited only by level, strength of ship, and effort.

The effort required to get a ship to UFE freely is rediculous, and it's supposed to be. I saw a guy yesterday saying he'd done it; at 3.3k hours he'd become UFE. To even get close you have to jump through specific hoops and do hours and hours and hours and hours of menial tasks-so menial that a basic script could do it. I'm not against grinding, but the amount to get something done, I am against.

Palladium: An Example.

There are 9 buildable gates (not including Kronos), requiring an average of 1778 spins (Thank you, http://www.bigpoint.com/darkorbit/b...ally-a-real-world-application-for-math.61129/ ). Many times the gate will require more spins, but for this example, we'll give the game the benefit of the doubt.

1778 spins is 26,670 palladium. The max cargo (42,076) is over it, so we'll say that there are no trips through pirates to sell palladium halfway. If you are your pet are out collecting resources, let's say you can get 1.5 palladium a second. This is halved because of pirate interference and other companies'. We're looking at 0.75 palladium a second. That would take 35,560 seconds. 593 minutes. 10 hours.

The closest gate requiring an average of 1778 spins is the Kappa gate, at 1811. 10 hours for probably the most spammed gate in the entire game. A 25% ( REMOVED ) chance to get Hercules; so getting 8 Hercules is 32 kappas avg. 10 drones at 40. That is 400 hours of collecting Palladium in a Citadel, not including the time it takes to complete a gate (gets boring after the second or third time). Honestly, who wouldn't think about botting gates.

Or, guess what, to get those 40 gates you can just spend money! How much, you ask? Well, on a Mega Happy Hour, that's exactly 7,244,000 uri- so more than 700 dollars. And then you still have to do the gates and hope that you get all your Hercules at average timing or before. Nice joke.

Here are my suggestions for making the game easier and generally more fun, to attract more players and more profit.
1. Halve the cost of all drone formations.
2. Either give all users the effects of Premium, or rework it so that it's less of a gap between players.
3. Take the cost of skill designs down from 250k to 150k.
4. Rework the alien AI. Everybody loves the sib waves in alpha/beta/gamma, circling for 5 years because they are so slow and stupid.
5. Make seprom drop from everything tougher than a sibelon.
6. Double the uridium from all aliens except Cubikons and those in gates.
7. The pet shouldn't use fuel; or make fuel cost Credits.
8. Re-emphasize the class basis in the game. Having one goal in mind is okay, having multiple is better. Goliath, Vengeance, Aegis, Citadel, and Spearhead should all have their own, equal roles to play, none generally better than the other.
9. Introduce more random drops (Booty keys, log disks, amounts of uridium, even ships) for killing tougher aliens relative to the player's level.
10. Make full Hercules and Havoc status easier to obtain, and make the Kronos gate require less pieces.

Balancing Suggestions
1. The spearhead isn't even good anymore. It is a bad version of the pusat. Increase its price to 125,000, lasers to 12, generators to 15 and base speed to 400.
2. The citadel is the most niche "class" in the game. It's only useful for its large cargo bay and its good to have a couple for base defense. In every other way that the Goliath is not a better Citadel, the aegis or Pusat is. Up its lasers to 10 and make Protection also reflect 25% of the damage inflicted on the Citadel to whatever enemy has the ship locked, or alien attacking it. In addition, make enemies' Draw Fire lock the Citadel for the duration, not allowing them to lock anything else.
3. Do something with the Solace.
4. Add a new drone configuration that slows the ship by 50%, lowers lasers and rockets by 10% and reflects damage taken (not damage applied) by 40%.

I request thread lock.

 

Note: The thread will be re-opened only if the OP requests for it.

Enjoy the game.

Closing due to inactivity.