Impressive amount of updates. Some thoughts...
- Extreme hazards.. weren't blizzards and dust storms already in the game? Or is he saying that now these weather events require extra suit protection now?
- Planet rotation.. I don't think speed of rotation is the problem; this seems more like a UI issue in terms of tracking space stations. Either that, or space stations should be made geosynchronous (locked in rotation with the planet). I have kept away from all the streams and spoilers, but are people saying that every planet has a fixed 12 minute day/night cycle? That would be very disappointing, and I guess the only upside to reducing rotation rate. I had hoped there would be a wide variation of planet rotation rates as in our real universe.
- Planets... I'm honestly surprised to not see "added gas giants" in this update, since it seems to be the number one request. By "dead moons" I guess no moons prior to this update were lifeless? Also wondering how "low atmosphere" planets plays out in gameplay, considering we always have a suit on. Probably more of an aesthetic thing...lighting more stark, more stars visible at night.
- Trading... We've still heard very little about the economic system and whether it is dynamic, i.e. prices change based on player actions, but his use of the phrase "galactic economy" at least points to an economy where each star system isn't isolated from each other.
- Ground combat... Though I haven't watched the streams, from everything I saw on the official footage I really don't think the Sentinels needed to be made more dangerous. They already seem like an unstoppable robot death army designed to interrupt our fun. Also, I continue to believe that having nameless enemies doesn't provide the same kind of make-your-own-narrative raw material as things like true NPCs like AI bounty hunters.
- Space combat... Brake drifting? I guess he's using a driving metaphor here. Does this mean we can do 180-degree spins while maintaining forward momentum like the Vipers in BSG? I don't know if there's any Newtonian physics at play with the ships; it's always looked fairly Star Wars.
- Base building and owning freighters... I know there's a vocal minority that wants this game to be Starbound, but unless Sean is talking about temporary structures, building bases and holing up on a planet seems counter to the whole idea of this game. I'd much rather see us own bigger ships we can expand with modules, becoming in effect portable bases. I hope these giant freighters Sean refers to means that we'll have a docking bay where we can keep multiple ships.
- Definitely looking forward to space cantinas.
