I don't know if this is the place to make general suggestions about Pirate Galaxy, but this balance update gives me hope for this game. I myself would be more inclined to invite my friends to play and support it if y'all keep this up. And if it has a solid base, that could open up a lot of opportunities for players and devs alike. Some thoughts, ideas, and pain points below - take these with a grain of salt:
- Right now this game is still relatively quiet (at least on Solaria) and could benefit from an influx of new players. Whether that's done through ads, streaming, or YouTube sponsorships, more players means more money and more opportunities for us to fight it out in conquests/OTB with the powerful ships we've built to hopefully take us into the next system release... But you'll want to work out the kinks first before you approach a second "launch" in that fashion, and that will require giving players more of an incentive to play. Grinding is not one, I don't really have much of an incentive to finish Oort right now (except for story) unless there's a future system release, and the lack of active players that far along in Solaria makes the Oort story prohibitively difficult.
- Before a new system or new set of story missions may be in order, you may want to consider cosmetics. Guild Wars 2 does this very well - they have a season system in place that rewards players for completing daily, weekly, and special time-gated achievements with a special currency that they can spend on gold (cryo equivalent), crafting materials, emotes, and cosmetic items in a store entirely separate from the cash shop. You can't buy your way into it. Like Pirate Galaxy, balance in the endgame of GW2 is very similar - the best gear you can get is only ~5-15% better and isn't necessary to enjoy the game or progress the story. Thus, most players participating in events and achievement hunting in the endgame are doing so to obtain cosmetic items, emotes, and etc. And ArenaNet is always releasing new cosmetics, sometimes making old ones exclusive and unobtainable. But for cosmetic items, Pirate Galaxy has...paint. And maybe drones and tournament ship variants. The diversity of functionality for ships right now is very good, but functionality only goes so far. I know it might be challenge to make ships "modular" in Java in a way that would allow you to offer visual, structural changes - it doesn't have to be monumental, but having the option to alter my ships this way is something I'd welcome. More tournament variants of ships would be cool as well - ones that I can switch to without buying an entirely new ship when I already own the regular variant. See: Everspace 2's cosmetic system.
- The way y'all are making items like taunt and aggrobeacon actually do something useful for both PVE and PVP is a good step forward. Since I started playing back in ~2012, I've never wanted taunt on any of my ships except maybe to attempt to cheese a particular story mission. The new functionality makes so much more sense! Great job on this one.
- Like taunt was until now, achievements are still relatively meaningless. The points I can get for obtaining those achievements do nothing, or at least nothing substantial enough for me to bother. If achievement points can be factored into the aforementioned new cosmetic/currency system somehow, I'd have a much greater incentive to go back through the older systems to work on their completion, which in turn will make me and other players want to play the game more & spend more on memberships and such. And this can go hand-in-hand with...
- PVP/CQ seasons with defined rewards for achieving a top % tier above other players/clans that can be exchanged for cosmetics, gravitons, or cold hard cryo. Also, a possible "little league" tier for players who haven't reached the endgame (pre-Sirius?) that allows them to compete with rules that limit ships to the blue tier, with no RDX or parsecs. OTB / Clan CQ's could be in their own separate tiers as well, especially if winning a clan CQ gave the winning clan a temporary clan-wide bonus to XP, damage, drop rates, or what have you.
- On-demand OTB mode that enables players to queue up at any time and start a battle on the fly, which will start once there's enough players (or perhaps once every 2 hours, like with GW2's meta maps or the current PTR state). Rewards for this game mode can be related to the new currency, with initial bonuses that taper off some the more you play. GW2 has reward tracks for PVP in which you can move the track along quickly by completing related achievements (like capturing certain objectives), after which the track moves at slower increments for subsequent play until the daily reset. They also sell items that make these tracks progress slightly faster - and they are repeatable, instantly. It works extremely well for them.
These are just some ways I feel that Pirate Galaxy could become competitive in the current MMO market. These are the kinds of things that make players want to come back. It makes them feel like the devs care about them and their time. I'm sure you have your own constraints to contend with right now, but I'd love to see this game thrive and I think that ideas like these would rejuvenate its player base and send it to the moon.
