I stopped playing because the programming feature is impossible to use. Resorting to gates that return key presses is not a viable model. It's impossible to visualize and becomes a complete mess as soon as you try to do anything remotely sophisticated. The whole programming component should be separated from the ship building aspect and placed inside a distinct "layer" or interface. There is no reason a gate should have weight or take up space. You need a visual way to structure the program. Even the most rudimentary program can require up to 10 gates, which would take up too much space on the ship.
I also wonder if a programming model based on object-oriented programming wouldn't be more engaging than this low level gate system.
Ship structure is an issue. There needs to be a way to connect ship parts with more than one vector in order to create a scaffolding of some kind. Or introduce a different ship part to play that role. As it is right now, any big enough ship becomes an unstable wiggling mess.
Make the ship core smaller. There is no reason for making it so big.
Of course, there are the obvious bugs and fixes that need to happen. Too many times, my ship would explode for no reason, just because I broke the physics engine for some reason.
I could never figure out how power and fuel work... They recharge, except when they don't??? If you put enough solar panels, the shields will work forever and you are invincible... Is that by design? I like the idea of a strong shield, but maybe change the rules so that you are not allowed to fire weapons from behind a shield? That would make things interesting! And even encourage more battering ram designs.
All the weapons that track the mouse are overpowered. I only used 2 or 3 weapons, 2 of which where turrets that track the mouse. You need to remove those. Same for the sensor that tracks the mouse. It's just too much direct control.
We need more weapon data when building. Damage, range, etc.
More content also, obviously. More diverse enemies and more diverse challenges. How about maps where destroying isn't required. How about maps where you need to move stuff or navigate places.
New players should have 2 or 3 stock drones to start the game with. Having to build from scratch on the first try will scare away many new players.
More ship stats while building too: weight, size, total firepower, total fuels, etc.
The viewing area during a mission is too small. Often I would get shot by enemies off screen.
You should make the magnet directional.
When I send out sub-sections of my drone, I would like to see what happens to them. Some split screen feature would be nice.
Mechanical hinges should have an adjustable speed, or at least be faster when there is only a single weapon on it.
The proximity sensor should have a feature to change it's visibility arc, so that it isn't just a laser, but could be used to scan a wider area.
The small thruster needs to have some benefit over the larger one, or we will never use it. Same for the small battery.
Armor would be a nice addition.
The game isn't consistent in the way it deals with self collision (aka: shooting through your own ship). That needs to get sorted out.
I have no idea what springs are for...
An inertia sensor would be a nice addition.
I would play this game forever if it mean that I could go up against other players on a leader-board for the most bad-ass drone, but only if the arenas are procedurally generated and random, so that players can't optimize for a specific map.
