Suggestions for X4 (and hopefully X5)

[THE_TrashMan]

FOR X4:
- fixing of terran fighter designs (remove wings if they don't have the collision, make them look military/aggressive, rather than luxury shuttles. Actually, just remove most wings, they serve no purpose - especially the Kukri. That thing would never fly in atmosphere, and why would terrans even build atmospheric fighters when only 1 planet they own has an workable atmosphere)

- give the Asgard a proper amount of turrets. For it's size, it's laughable how little defensive turrets it has

- your faction uniform defaults: a selection screen where you can select default outfits for service crew, S/M/L class pilots (indivudally by class and military/civilian split)

- fix the damn beam weapons. Make them useful. Perhaps make them pulsed beams (like AAAf in Freespace2) so they aren't super-accurate. But if those beams melt fighters, so what? The counter is capital ships.

- XL TURRETS. Big, beefy ones. Like ww2 battleship. Heavily armored/shielded, nearly impossible to destroy, slow.

- side-storage landing pads (where fighters retract to one of the sides, not down.. naturally, you'd have 4 versions, 1 for each side) and NO storage mini S-class landing pads. Basically fighters connected to the sides of a ship and carried like that.

- better monetary mission rewards for early game.

- actual UPKEEEP. Not one-time paymet and you have a pilot/marine for life. Also, normalize prices of hireing marines/pilots, the price range is absurd. From 5000$ to 2 million for a marine?




FOR THE FUTURE (because these might bee too big of a change)

- A distinct split between primary (gun) and secondary (missile) slots. Missile shouldn't be mounted like gun, but rather attached like rocket pods (above/below/to the sides, but facing forward) or just be built-in into the fighter

- proper fighters (1 man, tiny cockpit that you just climb out of, no big spacious rooms, NO passenger capacity unless they are 2-seater)

- 2 seat fighters, with the AI copilot/rio handling missile locks, flares, etc..

[magitsu]

The uniform one is great, rest looks like much work for little value. The model adjustments they are bound to make are where there's still too much standard template vs. potential faction specific. Even there gates and elevator shows which common items won't change due to compatibility (AI pathing etc.).

Maybe the contents of the security room etc. could be more worthwhile in the future.

It's probably time to make space combat higher priority for a moment. So many of the complaints center around it.

[mrwuggles]

FOR X4:
- fixing of terran fighter designs (remove wings if they don't have the collision, make them look military/aggressive, rather than luxury shuttles. Actually, just remove most wings, they serve no purpose - especially the Kukri. That thing would never fly in atmosphere, and why would terrans even build atmospheric fighters when only 1 planet they own has an workable atmosphere)

- give the Asgard a proper amount of turrets. For it's size, it's laughable how little defensive turrets it has

- your faction uniform defaults: a selection screen where you can select default outfits for service crew, S/M/L class pilots (indivudally by class and military/civilian split)

- fix the damn beam weapons. Make them useful. Perhaps make them pulsed beams (like AAAf in Freespace2) so they aren't super-accurate. But if those beams melt fighters, so what? The counter is capital ships.

- XL TURRETS. Big, beefy ones. Like ww2 battleship. Heavily armored/shielded, nearly impossible to destroy, slow.

- side-storage landing pads (where fighters retract to one of the sides, not down.. naturally, you'd have 4 versions, 1 for each side) and NO storage mini S-class landing pads. Basically fighters connected to the sides of a ship and carried like that.

- better monetary mission rewards for early game.

- actual UPKEEEP. Not one-time paymet and you have a pilot/marine for life. Also, normalize prices of hireing marines/pilots, the price range is absurd. From 5000$ to 2 million for a marine?




FOR THE FUTURE (because these might bee too big of a change)

- A distinct split between primary (gun) and secondary (missile) slots. Missile shouldn't be mounted like gun, but rather attached like rocket pods (above/below/to the sides, but facing forward) or just be built-in into the fighter

- proper fighters (1 man, tiny cockpit that you just climb out of, no big spacious rooms, NO passenger capacity unless they are 2-seater)

- 2 seat fighters, with the AI copilot/rio handling missile locks, flares, etc..

Never ask a game dev for a visual change unless it's somthing game breaking, you own visual preference means nothing it's myopic, if you want the game to look a specific way do it yourself, this is an artist's work you don't take away agency from them, especially when your clearly not trained to identify exactly why the designs are poorly conceived, other then "it looks stupid". The rest seems like a laundry list of personal preferences, non of which have been conceived in conjunction with other design elements, you cannot balence ships or vehicle designs in a vacuum, they need to be reccitent to their role in game, relevant in economic cost and time to produce, all of these things factor into a design not just the turrets.

However, upkeep and better rewards that are scaled in relevance to the challenge as well as being cobgnizant of the players time would be an excellent edition, too bad they won't do it, their too busy Pavlov's doggin us I to the ventures system.

[THE_TrashMan]

Never ask a game dev for a visual change unless it's somthing game breaking, you own visual preference means nothing it's myopic, if you want the game to look a specific way do it yourself, this is an artist's work you don't take away agency from them, especially when your clearly not trained to identify exactly why the designs are poorly conceived, other then "it looks stupid". The rest seems like a laundry list of personal preferences, non of which have been conceived in conjunction with other design elements, you cannot balence ships or vehicle designs in a vacuum, they need to be reccitent to their role in game, relevant in economic cost and time to produce, all of these things factor into a design not just the turrets.

I can and I will. Also, these are suggestions, not demands.
I might do some changes myself (those that I can) if we had better tools and tutorials. I'm already working on some models, but I wonder if I'll have the drive to finish.
Regardless, your stance of "how can you suggest changes to the game - do it yourself!" Great. Never offer feedback. Never criticize.

All this talk about immersion, but if you don't care about sensible/believable ship designs, you failed at the start.
Terrans are supposed to be highly advanced, militarized, territorial and paranoid... They don't look like it. Their ships are like a ST shuttles + weird shapes and bits. Nothing about them looks militaristic. When it comes to visual designs, they are all over the place in X4. Half of the ships look terrible for their supposed role and their stats don't really match their looks - most obvious being the size and number of engines vs. speed... or how solid/sturdy a hull look vs. hitpoints/armor. Size/volume vs cargo space, etc...

When it comes to balance, it's a vague term in a single player game. Factions don't have to be balanced against each other. And adding something can be balanced by removing something else - if you make terran ships more powerful (more powerful how?), you can nerf their economy. I'm not going into the tools and methods for achieving "balance" - whatever that balance may be.

When factions design their ships like idiots, it ruins my immersion. There very few S class ships that I actually find even remotely appealing.

[YellowBelllyBlackSnake]

- give the Asgard a proper amount of turrets. For it's size, it's laughable how little defensive turrets it has

Got to agree. The current m turrets are too few and only concentrated around the middle. If the current m turret count was doubled from 6 to 12, and spread out across the hull, it would give the ship slightly better defence without making it much more powerful than it currently is.

- your faction uniform defaults: a selection screen where you can select default outfits for service crew, S/M/L class pilots (indivudally by class and military/civilian split)

I would finally be able to have a fleet crewed by people in business suits But seriously could be a nice feature.

- fix the damn beam weapons. Make them useful. Perhaps make them pulsed beams (like AAAf in Freespace2) so they aren't super-accurate. But if those beams melt fighters, so what? The counter is capital ships.

I've actually been thinking lately about how beams could be balanced, and some of it is based on how I remember Freespace 2 beams working. Some of the ideas I had were:

• add an initial charge animation before the beam fires, giving fighters a chance to dodge or moved out of the turrets firing arc. This would work best with slow turning turrets

• Reduced the rotation speed of the turret when it fires, making it harder for it to track targets.

• Damage falloff. The beam would do less damage the further the target is. I believe it can currently be simulated by having a slow travel speed for the beam. For example, set it so that the beam will reach it's max range halfway through firing. This should mean that the beam will only cause half its total damage at max range

Could even combine these together to get some interesting behavior from beams, or even other weapon types.

- XL TURRETS. Big, beefy ones. Like ww2 battleship. Heavily armored/shielded, nearly impossible to destroy, slow.

I don't know if you played X Rebirth, but there is this huge station defence turret that's basically the size of a destroyers mid-section. I Would love to see them return! Even if they are only available as an extra large station defence module - would probably need some XL battleships if they were to be ship mounted.

- side-storage landing pads (where fighters retract to one of the sides, not down.. naturally, you'd have 4 versions, 1 for each side) and NO storage mini S-class landing pads. Basically fighters connected to the sides of a ship and carried like that.

I've experimented with something like this in the past (added the ability for s ships to dock to a M freighter), and the Star Wars mod has something like it, so it is possibly. Of course it is also possible to use the current docks to make an M ship with 2 or 3 pads, that would still be able to fit on the current M pads - might not look that great though.

- better monetary mission rewards for early game.

Yes! Also more mid and late game missions would nice.

- actual UPKEEEP. Not one-time paymet and you have a pilot/marine for life. Also, normalize prices of hireing marines/pilots, the price range is absurd. From 5000$ to 2 million for a marine?

Honestly not sure if I Iike the idea of upkeep costs or not. It could make managing an empire more interesting, or it could make it more annoying and make the game even slower than it currently is.

FOR THE FUTURE (because these might bee too big of a change)

- A distinct split between primary (gun) and secondary (missile) slots. Missile shouldn't be mounted like gun, but rather attached like rocket pods (above/below/to the sides, but facing forward) or just be built-in into the fighter

If you mean having missile launchers only mountable on their own slots, the game can already do this. It's just a matter of setting the right tags in the xml files.

- proper fighters (1 man, tiny cockpit that you just climb out of, no big spacious rooms, NO passenger capacity unless they are 2-seater)

I wouldn't minds seeing this. It would especially be useful for mods, as currently it's awkward to add single seat fighters like the Battlestars Viper or Star Wars X-wing to the game - the Star Wars mod I believe increased the size of ships to get around requiring walkable interiors.

[mrwuggles]

Never ask a game dev for a visual change unless it's somthing game breaking, you own visual preference means nothing it's myopic, if you want the game to look a specific way do it yourself, this is an artist's work you don't take away agency from them, especially when your clearly not trained to identify exactly why the designs are poorly conceived, other then "it looks stupid". The rest seems like a laundry list of personal preferences, non of which have been conceived in conjunction with other design elements, you cannot balence ships or vehicle designs in a vacuum, they need to be reccitent to their role in game, relevant in economic cost and time to produce, all of these things factor into a design not just the turrets.

I can and I will. Also, these are suggestions, not demands.
I might do some changes myself (those that I can) if we had better tools and tutorials. I'm already working on some models, but I wonder if I'll have the drive to finish.
Regardless, your stance of "how can you suggest changes to the game - do it yourself!" Great. Never offer feedback. Never criticize.

All this talk about immersion, but if you don't care about sensible/believable ship designs, you failed at the start.
Terrans are supposed to be highly advanced, militarized, territorial and paranoid... They don't look like it. Their ships are like a ST shuttles + weird shapes and bits. Nothing about them looks militaristic. When it comes to visual designs, they are all over the place in X4. Half of the ships look terrible for their supposed role and their stats don't really match their looks - most obvious being the size and number of engines vs. speed... or how solid/sturdy a hull look vs. hitpoints/armor. Size/volume vs cargo space, etc...

When it comes to balance, it's a vague term in a single player game. Factions don't have to be balanced against each other. And adding something can be balanced by removing something else - if you make terran ships more powerful (more powerful how?), you can nerf their economy. I'm not going into the tools and methods for achieving "balance" - whatever that balance may be.

When factions design their ships like idiots, it ruins my immersion. There very few S class ships that I actually find even remotely appealing.

Now this is better feed back, but you missed my point, visual preserence is myopic, why designed the terrans to look like art deco pieces because its unconventional, and it breaks with standard design conventions to give them a more fluid feel, now I don't agree with this but it is what it is, and asking them to change the art when it takes month and months or work to complete and that they should do it because you don't like the designs is silly, it's not a request that will be given Creedence.

I also did not say you should not criticize, just that you shouldn't ask an artist to redeixg. Their work because you dont like it, other people might, others may hate it you will never satisfy everyone especially with art so this is why you don't ask for those changes unless it's gameplay related ( you could have said the gladus wings had not hitboxs, that's a real able reason to change things ) and I said do it yourself for thile above reasons because the you can get exactly what YOU want, and this extends only to the art, because as stated you can appease everyone it's extremely subjective unlike turret or other gameplay stuff like balence.

Edit, and to add terrans not being power in turret or weapon design is irrelevant in terms of balence (not lore that would make sense, but actual gameplay) and why is this, it's because their fighters are super menuverable, a large advantage, and what's most important is their economy, it's has less setups costs less to setup and their stations are monsterous in terms of production power, this right here is the technical advantage, they can quite literally outproduce every other faction in the game and that, like star wars and their universal data structure, it's not flashy but he'll if it's not obscenely advanced.

[THE_TrashMan]

Now this is better feed back, but you missed my point, visual preserence is myopic, why designed the terrans to look like art deco pieces because its unconventional, and it breaks with standard design conventions to give them a more fluid feel, now I don't agree with this but it is what it is, and asking them to change the art when it takes month and months or work to complete and that they should do it because you don't like the designs is silly, it's not a request that will be given Creedence.

It's not the matter if I like the designs or not, it's a matter of if it logically and narratively fits. It does not. This is not up to debate.
The ships look fine in of themselves, but don't fit their roles. As shuttles, racing/luxury ships? Yes. As dedicated fighters of a militaristic faction? No.

And again, I am providing feedback, hopefully for the future games. Not requesting that something must be changed NOW! As long as we get modding tools, no matter how much Ego messes up ship designs, the community can fix it. Heck, this game needs mods, I simply can't play without them. I used tons of ship mods even back in X3, there's no way all designs are going to match everyones tastes.

What I am saying that Egosoft should approach ship design (in the future) a bit more seriously and think at least a bit more like a real ship designer would.

[BmB]

Wings in space are easy to justify as radiators, military craft would have high power outputs and need substantial radiators. In any case I don't think X is realistic enough that it should bother anyone, it looks cool and I'm pretty sure the intention is to make them look like fighter aircraft.

[mrwuggles]

Wings in space are easy to justify as radiators, military craft would have high power outputs and need substantial radiators. In any case I don't think X is realistic enough that it should bother anyone, it looks cool and I'm pretty sure the intention is to make them look like fighter aircraft.

The intention is to make them look sleek and unconventional, like their soo high tech that the designs can waste space, look flimsy and yet still be powerful. They look like luxury ships because that conveys that thwir tech is so advanced that what we think of these days ie utilitarian designs etc simply dosent apply and they do weird things in there designs that seem off to how we normally build these craft for functionality instead of elegance. terrans do the opposite and this is ment to show that their advancement over the other races as they have discovered new ways to design ships such that the old paradigms or form over function no longer apply, they can go nuts on form and artistry in their designs as the physical needs to their ships require less space for the systems. Alternatively, their ships look like they do because of new discoveries in ship design that let them boost like they do, suggesting that parts of the frame may provide some assistance to their movement sort of like how the Normandy works in mass effect and the designs are ment to be a reflect similar advancement.

I find how egosoft went about this to make alot of sense from a design perspective and rational towards why they chose to go this route, add to this that they probably have European design sense given where they live and euro sci Fi always has some of the strangest ship designs it all makes sense as to why they went this way. I would prefer an evolution of the older ship designs from x3 but acknowledge that these designs don't really convey advancement and actually look quite utilitarian so going the way the did was a good plan.

[mrwuggles]

Now this is better feed back, but you missed my point, visual preserence is myopic, why designed the terrans to look like art deco pieces because its unconventional, and it breaks with standard design conventions to give them a more fluid feel, now I don't agree with this but it is what it is, and asking them to change the art when it takes month and months or work to complete and that they should do it because you don't like the designs is silly, it's not a request that will be given Creedence.

It's not the matter if I like the designs or not, it's a matter of if it logically and narratively fits. It does not. This is not up to debate.
The ships look fine in of themselves, but don't fit their roles. As shuttles, racing/luxury ships? Yes. As dedicated fighters of a militaristic faction? No.

And again, I am providing feedback, hopefully for the future games. Not requesting that something must be changed NOW! As long as we get modding tools, no matter how much Ego messes up ship designs, the community can fix it. Heck, this game needs mods, I simply can't play without them. I used tons of ship mods even back in X3, there's no way all designs are going to match everyones tastes.

What I am saying that Egosoft should approach ship design (in the future) a bit more seriously and think at least a bit more like a real ship designer would.

I mentioned this in my other post so I'll be brief, their designs look like they do because their advanced and as such don't fit with standard design convention, it's ment not to look how you expect because their so advanced that form no longer needs function so to speak and they can do strange things with their designs. Ego did think about this, it's why they are made this way they aren't ment to follow old design conventions and this causes confusion in your brain somthing that says this isn't right, and that exactly the point it's ment to defy standard design trends because this shows that their tech is so elevated that what we think ships should look like just dosent apply anymore.

And saying that the designs are just wrong and this is not up for debate is pretty obstinate and it does you no credit and agian follows back around to your own myopic interpretation as mentioned before. You should look into dualism, it easy to think your argument is universal when it never has been, people actually think differently, it's a tough nugget to crack internally as our brains are designed to be obstinate and god knows even after 40 years I haven't got a full handle on it. To cut my rant short here you need to accept that there are competing sensibilities here and that what you believe to be undebatable clearly is not, and the devs are not idiots, they have clearly put some thought into their designs it just dosent match up with what you expect.


Edit: omfg I just noticed this your an Imperial fists fan, haha no wonder your so implaceable.

[THE_TrashMan]

The intention is to make them look sleek and unconventional, like their soo high tech that the designs can waste space, look flimsy and yet still be powerful. They look like luxury ships because that conveys that thwir tech is so advanced that what we think of these days ie utilitarian designs etc simply dosent apply and they do weird things in there designs that seem off to how we normally build these craft for functionality instead of elegance. terrans do the opposite and this is ment to show that their advancement over the other races as they have discovered new ways to design ships such that the old paradigms or form over function no longer apply, they can go nuts on form and artistry in their designs as the physical needs to their ships require less space for the systems.

Yes, they changed reality so it doesn't apply to them. Such a fantstic explanation.
I would prefer "terrans are retrded" as explanation, it insults my intelligence less.

[jambock]

Just look at some mods and you know what to do; easy as that. The more popular the mod the more people want to see it in game; as examples i would say pay and receive tax per station in sectors; a more dynamic war; more diplomatic options; more ships and ship types, more sectors, etc... And out of mod content please keep improving the performance and adding plot missions. Better rewards for some missions (specially plot ones) would be good too.

[Mightysword]

I hope in future installations the X series will have new design philosophy around QoA stuffs. If I need to put it politely, the X series follows a very old school design, one that I feel popular since at least one or two decade ago, but not any more. It's the kind of the design that focus on policing the player's action (instead of freedom), creating speed bump for the sole purpose hinder the player (rather then provide a challenge) .etc. A few examples of this: Friendly fire against stations or short scanning range. And many many more.

I'm the type of player who focus the most on immersion, and things that illogical hurt my experience more than bugs. For example yesterday I did a certain mission that requires me to tail a ship within 20km range, as it goes through several sector, randomly drop satellite and eventually dock. It wasn't enjoyable at all, and that's not only because the experience was rather pale, but because these illogical question keeps circling in my head:

- What's the point of the 20km range, in fact what is the point of this type of mission? The game set in a space era where sensor go into hundred KM, with satellite network, with communication and tracking that span galaxy ... why tailing a ship is even a necessary thing?
- Why all of that extra movement? To lengthen the mission? But what for? X is not a short game that can be finished in just a few hours. There is no need to drag anything out 'cause a game is expect to last dozen if not hundred hours anyway.


Modern gaming design IMO should embrace player's comfortability, but there are a lot of design elements in X make me feel the Dev's want to watch over my shoulder to make sure I will play the game the way they intended it to be.

[mrwuggles]

The intention is to make them look sleek and unconventional, like their soo high tech that the designs can waste space, look flimsy and yet still be powerful. They look like luxury ships because that conveys that thwir tech is so advanced that what we think of these days ie utilitarian designs etc simply dosent apply and they do weird things in there designs that seem off to how we normally build these craft for functionality instead of elegance. terrans do the opposite and this is ment to show that their advancement over the other races as they have discovered new ways to design ships such that the old paradigms or form over function no longer apply, they can go nuts on form and artistry in their designs as the physical needs to their ships require less space for the systems.

Yes, they changed reality so it doesn't apply to them. Such a fantstic explanation.
I would prefer "terrans are retrded" as explanation, it insults my intelligence less.

Welcome to other people's freedom of expression, they do as they do, shit ain't up to you., but I'm sure you don't care about that, so dig in there Dorn I'm sure it's comfortable in your little fortress, though perhaps a bit lonely.

Edit and to add, what I mentioned before isn't some random crap I came up with, it's actually a convention used throight science fiction, star trek probably most notable in this, but there are others, some of the ships in sins of a solar Empire don't even have engines they kinda just move around with some weird gravity shit, and since your a Warhammer fan let's not forget the necrons, those pryamids move around by breaking physics, so no one's trying to Insult your intelligences it's just sci Fi bull.

[magitsu]

Someone should really start focusing on missions.
There could be so many kinds of, just based on what's already there. For example the player inventory items aren't utilized very broadly. Instead of the just mentioned tailing mission, it could be replaced with multiple options. One could be to plant something similar to a bomb, except a bug. It would have to be harder, so something related to spotting/distraction perhaps.
Alternatively you could use the fine meals for bribery/poisoning and replacing a crew member with a planted spy. Then it could either provide intel, or help for example in a boarding attempt to seal the deal of taking control.

I'll admit it's very hard to come up with a mission type which doesn't lose its luster once it becomes familiar. It needs to loop, otherwise it's just a story mission with one chance to surprise/awe. So they end up being taxi/kill type simplifiactions if there's no time or motivation for creativity. Perhaps community should pitch in and test (there's e.g. Kuertee's Emergent missions to start with). X series needs many kinds of gameplay loops. There's many already in which have been abandoned as sort of working but not really (like hacking/black market).

[THE_TrashMan]

Yes, they changed reality so it doesn't apply to them. Such a fantstic explanation.
I would prefer "terrans are retrded" as explanation, it insults my intelligence less.

Welcome to other people's freedom of expression, they do as they do, shit ain't up to you., but I'm sure you don't care about that, so dig in there Dorn I'm sure it's comfortable in your little fortress, though perhaps a bit lonely.

Edit and to add, what I mentioned before isn't some random crap I came up with, it's actually a convention used throight science fiction, star trek probably most notable in this, but there are others, some of the ships in sins of a solar Empire don't even have engines they kinda just move around with some weird gravity shit, and since your a Warhammer fan let's not forget the necrons, those pryamids move around by breaking physics, so no one's trying to Insult your intelligences it's just sci Fi bull.

Something being a convention doesn't make it a good thing.

There are things you CANNOT go around. Period. Any claims of "sufficiently advanced tech" is born out of ignorance or lazyness. Sufficiently advanced tech isn't magic and that oft-mentioned quote is poison.

[mrwuggles]

Yes, they changed reality so it doesn't apply to them. Such a fantstic explanation.
I would prefer "terrans are retrded" as explanation, it insults my intelligence less.

Welcome to other people's freedom of expression, they do as they do, shit ain't up to you., but I'm sure you don't care about that, so dig in there Dorn I'm sure it's comfortable in your little fortress, though perhaps a bit lonely.

Edit and to add, what I mentioned before isn't some random crap I came up with, it's actually a convention used throight science fiction, star trek probably most notable in this, but there are others, some of the ships in sins of a solar Empire don't even have engines they kinda just move around with some weird gravity shit, and since your a Warhammer fan let's not forget the necrons, those pryamids move around by breaking physics, so no one's trying to Insult your intelligences it's just sci Fi bull.

Something being a convention doesn't make it a good thing.

There are things you CANNOT go around. Period. Any claims of "sufficiently advanced tech" is born out of ignorance or lazyness. Sufficiently advanced tech isn't magic and that oft-mentioned quote is poison.

You have some learning to do, I don't envy you the road was not pleasent when I went through. Good luck to you.

[THE_TrashMan]

Well have to agree to disagree (on the basic principles of reality in seems).

You might be fine with eating whatever gruel is served, I am not. But it takes time to develop proper taste. You will learn in time, I hope.

[q111]

FOR X4:
- fixing of terran fighter designs (remove wings if they don't have the collision, make them look military/aggressive, rather than luxury shuttles. Actually, just remove most wings, they serve no purpose - especially the Kukri. That thing would never fly in atmosphere, and why would terrans even build atmospheric fighters when only 1 planet they own has an workable atmosphere)

Personal preference; i like most wings on them, even the Kukri.

- give the Asgard a proper amount of turrets. For it's size, it's laughable how little defensive turrets it has

Nope, the Asgard is already strong enough with 4 XL-Shields, it does not need to be an impregnable fortress. For defense, you should have a fleet with Osakas that protect you from small fighters. The Earlking has more and better turret placement, but only 1 Shield.

- your faction uniform defaults: a selection screen where you can select default outfits for service crew, S/M/L class pilots (indivudally by class and military/civilian split)

Yes, absolutely, but beside of humans, there is not a lot of variety (and i think that there is no equipment-system on the models, they seems to be 1 model with clothes that can't be removed)

- fix the damn beam weapons. Make them useful. Perhaps make them pulsed beams (like AAAf in Freespace2) so they aren't super-accurate. But if those beams melt fighters, so what? The counter is capital ships.

Yes, Beam-Weapons are super-underpowered right now; i would personally fix it in various ways, but in the last time i think that the best solution would be to change how beam weapons do damage: when the beam hits a ship it does very low damage that ramps up the longer the beam is fixating on your ship; if you don't escape it, it does more and more damage and gets dangerous pretty quickly, not OP dangerous, but you should still try to avoid them; if they are too strong, lower the damage or the rotational speed so that you can escape if you want.

- XL TURRETS. Big, beefy ones. Like ww2 battleship. Heavily armored/shielded, nearly impossible to destroy, slow.

I think that the L-Turrets are big enough, but i would like to see it less on ships, but more as as stationary defensive turret that can destroy L and X-l ships easily, but is very weak to S and M fighters. But hey, why not; a new ship type like a siege weapon or it's own battleship or maybe an turret where the player can acutally target stuff; as long as the balance is right.

- side-storage landing pads (where fighters retract to one of the sides, not down.. naturally, you'd have 4 versions, 1 for each side) and NO storage mini S-class landing pads. Basically fighters connected to the sides of a ship and carried like that.

I understand what you mean, but i don't think this is easily done here; while we have something like this on the Teladi Trading station, having it on a ship is far more complicated; beause of this we have actually the Boron that launches as they do; but yes, maybe with an X5 if possible. Still i think that the Boron-Compromise is actually quite good, and i also love my Tokyo and the Split Carrier (the name i always forget)

- better monetary mission rewards for early game.

Yes and no... The issue is not the monetary amount in the early game, i think the simply quests reward enough, but the issue lies otherwise; not enough quests and even more important the WRONG ONES. Why does player get in the early game quests for building a defensive-station when they have how much money, half a million max? I think that quests should especially in the early game only show up for what the player can do: can the player buy all necessary blueprints and have enough money to build the station; if yes, then make it show up, if not, then save it for another day.

- actual UPKEEEP. Not one-time paymet and you have a pilot/marine for life. Also, normalize prices of hireing marines/pilots, the price range is absurd. From 5000$ to 2 million for a marine?

Maybe for an X5, but not for X4, this would require them to overwork the whole reward-structure and a whole new interface for employees and a way to mass dismissal of employees.