Tremendous potential, but hobbled by simple system of false economics. One aspect of this has your ship journey to a distant world in another galaxy, whereupon you return with rare items not available in your own. But to your surprise you can only sell those rare items for the same small markup profit. In other words, buying and selling does not seem to be impacted by the extraordinary distance or hardship. Suggestion, if someone travels to another galaxy and returns with a very rare item, then the price paid should be reflected accordingly, say... perhaps three times the normal markup?

The mandatory graphic showing Ludicrous Speed Galaxy Travel is a tiresome joke by the third time around. Or, imagine it this way; on the way to work, the doorman tells you a funny joke and you think it's great. Then every morning the doorman tells you the exact same joke; well, you get the idea...

The "Crew Member Sickness and Die in Ten Seconds" phenomenon ruins this game. Any illness seems to be an automatic death sentence. Crew members cannot get a cold and then recover. As soon as they get sick, it's an emergency life or death event. Even getting a Sick Bay that takes up THREE slots, crew members routinely fall ill and die with no recourse. Having a medic on board also seem to do absolutely nothing. There should also be a "Resume Normal Time" on Alert Message option, so that one can at least remove the sick employee off line before they drop dead. Hey, maybe have a click switch to Auto Sick Call that crew member and have them report to sick bay to get better instead of continuing to stand watch (where they soon drop dead). Even better perhaps would be to have that crew member function less effectively until their illness is over. Or, how about a Cryo Chamber in Sick Bay, where the sick crew member with the terminal illness can be frozen until we make port and send him to the hospital to get better? Please don't use EVERY sick event as a terminal illness.

Further, having ANY of those robots on board, to fix, clean the ship, or heal the crew, is a sham. None of those things happen. You still have to pay at the ship yard to have your ship cleaned and repaired regardless. IMHO, don't bother wasting time researching or buying those things. Also, the repair and cleaning costs are ridiculously high. Even having a crew member max out on repair skill working overtime (three shifts). It has almost zero impact on costs of repair. Also a ship sitting in space dock accumulates the same amount of wear and tear and needs repair too.

And why can't you have a permanent storage facility where you can store goods and retain unneeded crew members?

Also, the piracy thing is too much. Just about all the systems are infected with pirates but there are no cops anywhere. You figure that there would be patrols battling thieves who hang out right in front of the lucrative planets. But no, only thieves, so that you can't even go in without being accosted. And once they accost you, even if you pay them a bribe to get away (which, in the face of piracy, defies reason, they can take it all, rather than be happy with a bribe, otherwise, they never would have attack you in the first place) you may have have to circle the solar system again despite being at the doorstep the planet. I've had time of arrival listed as 0.02 then become 6.50 because I got attack, paid, and then had to re-orbit the solar system.

A lot of question marks for info are inactive. That is, they're useless. Also some of the rooms walls are not skinned, meaning that as you move from side to side to view the internal ship, you can see through some of the walls. The shower curtain doesn't always close. But you don't seen anyone showing, just a floating head with a long neck.

How about joining a convoy for mutual protection against pirates? Or how about hiring armed escorts?

And why do crew members insist on sleeping on the floor when there is a bunk available? After initially using the bunks for a few cycles, my crew thereafter refused to sleep in any of the bunks, no matter the upgrades. I eventually sold the bunks and made more cargo space.

Just a few random thoughts.

You've actually had sick crew members die?!? I've had crew members get sick lots and all that ever happens is they bum around (sleep and eat) until they're better. Unless I have the medical vending machine, then they just pop a pill and magically recharge themselves immediately afterwards.

As for repairs/cleaning, I've been able to keep the starting ship repaired and cleaned such that I rarely, if ever, had to pay for this at spaceports (and then it was minimal) - and this was with only one cleaner and one repairer (only at level 2 or 3). Once I got the larger ship I started getting more repair bills - despite having both robots - so I don't know what's up with that.

Of much more concern IMO is the fact that the cook and the medic roles are completely and utterly useless, as by the time you can buy the rooms that require these roles, you'll have almost certainly already researched the robots for them.

Just as bad (or possibly worse) is the fact that the economy in this game is stupidly broken. It seems that even a small ship can buy up the entirety of a planet's production, and even more baffling it appears that the warehouses on the planets/space stations are so small they will only store a very small amount of a product. Also bafflingly, the amount varies by product, and doesn't appear to be affected (much) whether or not the planet/station actually requires that product or not. Come to think of it, it's in theory possible to sell almost ANY product almost anywhere (if there's not already lots of the same product there), even if they don't need it (in which case I suppose it never disappears???). The stupidity of long journeys netting absolutely nothing extra in profits (which you mentioned) is just the nasty frosting on the stupidity cake.

Other strange things: purchasing two shield rooms with two scientists on board means effective invulnerability (provided you don't get your shield system hacked).

Also, why the hell is the "farscan" upgrade to the hacking station - which allows one to scan stations and ships - so much work to get? Generally this thing would be a "scanner" and not a "hack". Also, it's almost completely useless - it only "graphically" shows how much stuff a station has - but this doesn't tell you how many of each good (since maximums vary by good), nor does it tell you the prices. So what's the bloody point?

On top of that, though farscan can scan ships and show their shield/weapon strengths, it only shows how much cargo the ship carries - but not the type. Also pointless.

And yes, where are the space cops? I can just be a pirate jackass forever in this game and no one comes after me. Or, jackasses can come after me forever as well (mainly in the outer rings).

Finally, how hard is it to have more descriptions for stations, and have those actually match what the station's industries are? The very first system in the campaign - which I think is not randomly generated though I could be wrong - has TWO instances where there are two planets that share exactly the same description. Surely there are more descriptions than that!

IMO this game should still be in early access. If anyone is considering buying this, I'd wait a while - and LONG while - to see if/when these issues are fixed.

Yea, the sick crew members thing puzzles me also. I`ve had sick crew dozens of times and not one has ever died. I even thought they couldn`t die until the OP`s post. Also a good cleaner does keep things clean.

However, I do agree on much of the rest. This game is a jewel trying to get out, but right now needs heavy polishing and fixing before it`s even worth playing.

Interestingly enough, I found out that if I chucked the more elaborate sick bay, medics and robots, and instead installed the cheap pill vending machine, my crew stopped dying, LOL... This is hilarious. A vending machine should be clinically more robust than a full service sick bay with operating theater.

Additionally, I try to keep my pilots cross trained in the things that matter, like cleaning and repairing. As such, I only have one quarter active of one crew member, with the lowest pilot skill, fly the ship. I still get "speeding tickets" assessed periodically. Hey Dev, why not this? Just deduct money periodically without telling us why. There's no rhyme or reason to the speeding ticket thing anyway.

Also, how many areas of the Galaxy map is there to explore. I've gone Y+31 hexes in one direction and Y-22 in the other already, and the map doesn't scroll; you have to grab and inch it in one direction or the other. Further, the map doesn't have last screen memory, which means every single time you open it, you have to grab and inch it in the direction that you want. Additionally, the hex explored has zero correlation with the galaxies shown on the navigation screen. One has numerical assigns on an XY coordinate, while the other is based on names. How do you tell where you are on one and then the other? It would be helpful if a user can annotate locations. Maybe they can just eliminate the scientific individual hex exploration and just have the scientist auto explore in an expanding sphere from the home galaxy. Oh, and unless you specifically remember where you can from, it's easy to get lost as soon as you go from one galaxy to another.

Oh, I found something else too, the repair bills at the space ports? As long as you have robots, you can ignore them. I was using the space docks to provide repair and cleaning services. When I just stopped paying, nothing happened. My ship didn't fall apart.

And finally, the Piracy? If you surrender and negotiate as soon as the attack starts, you often have to pay nothing. Thus, I sold all my weapons and ammo and instead filled up with extra cargo bays.

Sick crew's health bar drops very quickly, but as long as you have beds free and their health bar wasn't too low to begin with (e.g. starving them will lower the health bar) they should recover eventually and not die. The pill vending machine indeed will speed up recovery much faster. The only advantage I found with the 3 slot med bay is that it's supposed to reduce the frequency of sickness if you upgrade it.

I think speeding tickets are just random events. I have gotten them on a Krakoon (well I had lvl 5 pilots and upgraded engines, but still...) Some of the random events are actually kinda funny though. My favorite one so far is a prank call suggested by my crew.

I think there's no end to the galaxy map. I researched in the X direction and gave up after I passed 20-something. As far as I can tell, all the systems are the same anyway. The only differences are what goods are illegal, and I've found one system that sells an extra ship type (it doesn't give you the Bighead achievement though, haven't figured that one out yet.) I wish there were more differences between the systems. At least have factions or something like in Pirates!, which will also address the aforementioned lack of space cops - just get banned from a system for some time if you keep pirating and gain favor with another system at war with them (totally lifting from Pirates! mechanic, but why reinvent the wheel all the time?) I think a similar favor mechanic for missions will also be nice, I find smuggling missions simply not worth the risk 'cos of the high fail penalty, but I might do them more if it gets me access to a smuggler's guild or something (it can even just be a title with no perks if they don't have enough manpower to polish the game more.)

Repair and cleaning are close to useless. As long as room conditions are >0%, I've found no ill effects (at 0%, the room will stop working, which can be problematic if it's the bridge, 'cos then you'll need to get towed to a planet - same as not having a pilot.) I've successfully played for a very long time with cleanliness at 0% for most of my rooms though. There're trash bags everywhere and I think my crew gets sick more often, but hard to tell. Sickness is easy to deal with with the vending machine anyway.

Battle system is broken, but I actually kinda like it - as pointed out, you can often get away paying nothing, so you can focus on trading. When you want to do piracy, just get two shield and you're invincible until your scientists pass out from fatigue or gets sick. Not particularly challenging, but hey, I play FTL when I want a challenge, I like the fact that Cosmonautica is a much more casual game. It would be nice if there was some variety though - have some space anomalies like in FTL to mix things up a little so it's not the exact same battle every time.

Squid830, I totally agree that cooks and medics are useless, except for maybe role-playing purposes. I feel that their real purpose is to make it hard to get your perfect crew, just like all those useless traits. I'm sort of okay with that though, since once you have millions of credits, there's nothing to do except spend them all on scouting to assemble the perfect crew.

On the economy, I actually like the fact that trade routes get saturated really quickly. An easy fix is to fly out of the system then fly right back though - that resets all the stockpiles. My observation is that planets that don't import a good will never run down their stock (e.g. sell waste to a planet that neither imports nor exports it, and it'll stay there forever.) Planets that export something will stop using their corresponding imports if their exports is full. Because planets are randomly generated, more often than not you'll find that exports have nowhere to go, so eventually no planets can import nor export anything. At that point, fly to another system and go break that economy then come back, rinse and repeat =) I would like to see more incentive for interstellar trade though, at least have missions that require you to go to different systems (the trade missions right now have such a short time limit that going interstellar with them is not practical without a Stingrace with max pilots, and even then it's hard...)

Ralphrepo, I'm not sure if you're still having issues with your crew sleeping on the floor, but you might have accidentally restricted access of it. When in-flight, click on the room and make sure the restriction for crew is unchecked. Btw, I restrict all my facilities from passengers. Nothing bad seems to happen if they can't satisfy their needs. But then again, I don't do many passenger missions (GOG version doesn't have the hotfix yet, so it's all combat missions still outside of initial system.)

I noticed this but wasn`t sure if what i was seeing was right. Maybe I did have to pay something?

Well this makes piracy completely stupid and illogical. It`s bad enough you can bribe a pirate out of being killed, (but plausible), but paying nothing if you give up quickly is absolutely retarded. What`s the point of a pirate attacking then?

This game needs fixing badly. I wouldn`t have bought it if I had known it was this bugged.

From the dialogue, it seems like the game evaluates how much damage either party has against one another. If there is equal damage (or no damage yet for either party) then it's considered a draw and no one comes out ahead. Hence neither party pays. If you sit and allow the other party to hammer away at your hull and you sustain a significant amount of damage, then for you to walk away from that fight would cost you a lot. I remember waiting a few seconds and noted that the enemy hackers had already weakened my shields; to get out of that fight then cost me a few hundred credits.

Thus, if you want to get away with minimal or no payment, immediately negotiate with the enemy at the start of the fight. And yes, I agree that the space piracy thing is completely warped in this. Even notice how the pirates only seem to target YOUR ship and no one elses? Yeah, I had played with those buttons, left them off, then put them on; it doesn't matter. At the very beginning, my crew bunks in the quarters without a problem. Then at some point they just stop sleeping in the beds and on the floor regardless of the number of beds available, even when both the passenger and crew restriction buttons remain untouched. Meh... I got rid of the beds and expanded their quarters into more cargo space, LOL...

One other thing: crew members only require certain "advanced" needs at higher levels - i.e. the "boredom" meter doesn't show up until past level 6/7 or something. The thing is, with certain crew members, they never need to be promoted to that level.

Pilots, for example, should only be piloting - ever, whether in battle or not. So for pilots, I would promote them till they reach level 5 piloting (the max), then never promote them again. They don't need other skills since when they're not piloting they're sleeping. That way, your pilots (I end up with two later so they can swap) never get bored because they don't have this meter!

Same with the scientists - since they're needed for research or shield.

The only people who should have additional skills are shooter/hacker, and cleaner/repairer - so a shooter/hacker can clean/repair when not in combat. So those are the only ones that will ever get "bored", and I've yet to notice this meter actually doing anything.

These issues all point to a game that isn't ready to leave Early Access yet. But this seems to be happening more and more as devs learn they can get away with it.

What gives me a tiny bit of hope is that I noticed the campaign and special events are all Lua code, so it can be expanded and modded.

Unfortunately, the devs didn't see fit to expose any of the actual game mechanics - such as rate of advancement, rate of hunger/boredom/etc. increase, etc. (at least I didn't notice on a cursory look over) - so it's not currently possible to fix the various issues and/or make the game slightly more challenging/logical.

Let's hope the devs fix this, because there's a potentially awesome game in here waiting to come out - it's just so hopelessly broken/boring right now.

The trade is not very well made in this game. Often you find something you want to trade, but the planet has not enough of it to fill your cargo room. And it also happens real often that you cannot sell your wares because the planet you want to sell them has not enough space left. WTF?