Dakanmer

I agree. A station like Utopia and others already established should be the actual port of calls not another AI run market. NQ should have spent time developing the tools for player run market mechanics.  If NQ wants to push the concept of "player created content", then give the players the tools to do it. Make building something have a purpose. 

The game simply cannot scale without player-run markets -- especially with the new FTUE giving players a hex and outpost so early. 
 
One of the core issues with FTUE is not solved -- that markets become further and further away over time, so the new player experience inevitably becomes worse over time.
 
I don't get how the core market tech could be developed without this in mind...but my guess is that it simply wasn't designed to be this flexible (despite devblogs that make it clear that they did eventually want to roll this out?) 
 
Unfortunately, it's too late now -- NQ still isn't thinking at an "MMO scale" or considering how churn rate will degrade FTUE month after month.
 
That aside, it'd be nice to actually have a reason to visit other players' creations and Aphelia's market clones are both boring and slightly immersion breaking...not to mention degrading the idea of a single-shard system because markets are functionally identical to instances. Especially as a new player it is hard to take "single shard" seriously when the first thing you need to do is figure out which market instance you're at if you want to play with a friend.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1949863330/dual-universe-civilization-building-sci-fi-mmorpg/posts/1692359
Dev Diary: Player-driven economy
 
 

I feel like radar activities should get sort of a complete rework, but since I have not used these system a lot or at all, I never dared to make suggestions:
 
I think the current 2 SU can be okay, but only for a radar that scans spherically.
 
There should be other scanners that are far more involved like scanning cones or planes, they could reach much further... The narrower the search angle the wider the reach, the more volume scanned the longer delay between two scans. But also, importantly, scans don't cross planets or atmospheres (for the really far reaching ones).
 
It's a very rough draft, but what if we made it more like guns, a certain number of different radars can be plugged into a seat. And the act of scanning more involved, cones need to be pointed, spheres can be enlarged at the cost of less frequent updates, planes can be rotated (scanning vertically, horizontally and everything in between).
 
The radar user would sort of have an overlay ingame, with sliders for each radar for finetuning (reach, angle, width, refresh rate etc), and their camera position would factor in as well.
 
Possibly the main radar guy could also relegate his data to gunner seats but that's less important.
 
 
And the DSAT you'd sorta make it like a territory scanner, after like 10-15minutes it tells you how many asteroids, mobile and imobile structures are in a sector (something like 30x30x30 SU).
 
 
 
Sry I'll stop now, I obviously don't know enough about this to make really good suggestions but maybe I gave somebody else a better idea.

I love the Lua-part of the game. However - that is just another AFK-gaming loop that already exists in form of missions. That kind of game play has no room in a game imho.

They could implement something like the mining scanner that returns the distance to the nearest contact only. Most players are familar with that mechanics and maybe the devs could even reuse some code.

100% agreed. That's why even a 10su radar that "pings" would be amazing.  That mechanic alone could tie in to so much content.  Was the ping another player ship? A wreck? An asteroid? If it is an asteroid it might be a basic, might be an exotic!! Some actual excitement to explore. And if NQ added other content down the road like some anomaly or something, they already got the radar base gameplay so easier to Incorporate it. So much win.

No. Just no. The DSAT mechanics is, imho, an utter disaster. It's literally fly to position A, then B....to E. It's just a time sink without any fun. It needs to be reworked into something that players can learn to be good at, while having *fun*. *Finding* a wreck should only be half the enjoyment, the hunt for them must the enjoyable too, as should the hunt for asteroids.
 
 

"Suppose to be a challenge" Jesus christ they have their heads in the clouds. This is like on Easter I take my kids to the country and put 3 Easter eggs hidden...only over 20 acres. Good luck.
 
Make no mistake, this is them doing the BARE MINIMUM and trying to call it content. There is no challenge, or subsequent reward for aimlessly roaming empty space without some guidance. 

To use NQ's own words they want finding wrecks to be an rare and "exclusive" event. Because you know, this game already has so much general content that they needed to add something special for the hard core players.. sigh..
 
And to illustrate how bad it is. I have been playing the game for as long as it has existed, and I have yet to even see one of those fabled wrecks...
And then there is also the small problem of wreck value not even coming close to justifying the time and effort apparently needing to find them. And while the value of the new space wrekcs may be higher (to be confirmed..), it is a moot point if nobody can find them in any sensible way.

I haven't done any wreck searching myself, but I agree with previous posters. Make salvaging a viable game loop for people to enjoy.
 
However - the game also needs an element sink. Once built, a ship is forever unless you PvP. There's such a huge amount of elements in player's pockets right now it's not even funny.
 
Add wear and tear to elements and let us RECYCLE them into the a percentage of the parts they were made of (not ore). This would open up for another game loop between salvager and manufacturer.

I too am disappointed with the space wreck system as it’s currently implemented. When I read about them in the dev blog, I was expecting frequent spawns that would open up a new salvaging loop. I also thought that they would be relatively lucrative wrecks that fairly compensated salvagers for their time (relative to the other game loops). However, I spent over 16 hours searching for wrecks after the patch dropped and didn’t find a single one. I was then told that space wrecks are something to be stumbled upon rather than actively searched for.
 
 I am very disappointed that this is the case and I have given up on looking for these wrecks until something changes.
 
Suggestions to make space wrecks more interestIng and enjoyable:
 
-Procedural spawns of the wrecks in the paths of transiting vessels at random time intervals (within, say, once every 1-2 hours).
-A specialized abandoned construct radar that has a passive range of 10+ SU.
-Exclusive elements that can only be found from salvaged wrecks (i.e. a new variant on existing elements or a new tier of elements that cannot be manufactured.
-Alternatively, exclusive schematics of these element variants.
-Unique ship spawns that have buffed attributes compared to what is normally available in the game world (i.e. lvl 6 equivalents of handling buffs)
-Or, just more frequent spawns that have a higher payout to match other activities in-game.

NQ, I had hoped you had taken this to heart.
 
 
I had hoped we were being offered an alternative to mining/manufacturing and courier work. A chance to play as a humble scavenger. If this expectation was either misguided or unrealistic, please read no further. However, if this was the goal...
 
...what exactly were you going for? It's been a week and I have roamed PvP space, both in-between planets, and out in random directions for a couple thousand SU, and have not found so much as an XS wreck. It feels as if you took your implementation of asteroid finding and went in the complete opposite direction to the extreme. Unless the goal was to just have us chance upon a wreck, here are a few reasons scavenging is completely untenable.
 
- Detection distance: Space, as you know, is very big, and 2 SU is "needle in a haystack" metrics.
 
- Rate of travel: This problem is two-fold. One, if traveling at maximum speed you are doing about 2.5 SU per minute (forgive my math if I am off). This means that you have less than a two minute window on your hours long search to see a wreck IF it intersects your search sphere right down the middle. The second issue being braking distance. Due to the detection range being so small, even a slight delay in seeing a wreck dead ahead could lead to you losing it in the backtracking process. Sure, we could reduce our cruising speed, but now we are covering less ground in an already astronomical search.
 
- Spotting the wreck: As I mentioned you have a very small window of opportunity to even see a wreck in the perfect conditions. Are we expected to stare at our screens the entire time we are searching? Sure, some one may (perhaps already have) write some LUA to make an audible alarm if a radar contact pops up, but it hardly seems reasonable to have to rely on that. Slow-boating anywhere is an hours long process and to be expected to sit in your pilot seat staring at space is completely unreasonable.
 
- Number of wrecks: Only you know how many are truly out there, but I will speak to the type of density needed to reasonably satisfy a scrapper such as myself. Over the course of, say, a four hour play session, I would hope to see roughly 2-3 wrecks. They don't need to be "What a haul!", but I do need to see something for my efforts.
 
In a game that has all but zero PvE, this is a great opportunity to add some that doesn't require AI, but we need reasonable tools to succeed! Increasing detection distance significantly doesn't meaningfully affect PvP (*ahem* such as it is) due to lock-on distances remaining unchanged, and this would be just the simplest of solutions. If I'm the only one who feels this way go ahead and ignore me, but if there are others out there that feel the same way, please speak up now!

I decided to look at how starting fresh would be, and aside from it meaning months of building tons of containers and (many people) pooling their daily allowance to buy schematics for the most basic stuff, something else became apparent:
You can't advance in tiers without mining asteroids. Because the mining option for planets/moons has been removed entirely, you can't get anything beyond T2 ores without mining asteroids. T2 are ground spawns on every planet, with the type  available depending on the planet, but there are no T3-5 ground spawns. The mining units, which are supposed to take the place of digging tunnel networks, require the same tier of ore to make as they dig up. That means that while a T2 (uncommon) mining unit is plausible to make with the resources available (especially on Sanctuary), the T3 mining unit is not, because you can't access the resources to make it.
Since there was no wipe to make this apparent, I believe it may be an oversight. Making it entirely necessary for people to mine asteroids for simple advancement seems like a mistake. Mining asteroids is a great way to gather a lot of ore quickly (assuming no competition), but by making it necessary, most people not in a large org will be excluded until those orgs have had their fill (I'd say half to a full year at least, given the artificially slow pace of progression via ludicrously expensive schematics, high territory and trade taxes, and a small daily allowance, which puts most player income back into the system early on, rather than circulation in a player economy).
 
I recommend looking back at the changes and how the affect players starting from scratch. When you remove or change a feature, consider that impact, not just how it will slow things down or help with lag or other things. Those are primary concerns that improve the game, but so is making it reasonable to progress as a solo player, or even as a small org. It might make sense if all you care about is slowing things down, but there are other ways to accomplish that, such as randomizing your planet of origin (since there are multiple marketplaces on each planet/moon, there's no reason multiple starting points can't also be created), using a system of research to come up with schematics that can then be traded (solid market for that, and it would be something to specialize in), and no doubt many other ways that can work alone or in combination. Making things artificially expensive (schematics are legit, but there's no reason they shouldn't be reproducible or cheap. They're data meant to be used to rebuild civilization, not state secrets. And who are we paying all our taxes to?) while giving a daily allowance doesn't seem like a reasonable approach for the background that we're supposedly coming into (a super-advanced future where we're all refugees trying to restart civilization).

Some things are missing from LUA API that I think should be there:
Get docked construct name by ID Currently you can only get its ID, except through radar. This function should be available as a general parent construct function, not just radar. Get docked construct position/orientation by ID These functions exist for getting the parent's position/orientation, but not the docked construct Get active waypoint If the player has a waypoint active, return it as a ::pos string, just as with the function to get waypoint from player position. A category for "database" in the codex Some functions use database to get information, like database.getConstruct and database.getPlayer(ID). Categories for other function types that aren't listed but can be used, if there are any others (like database), or updating existing categories with functions that aren't listed but exist Self explanatory. People can't use functions if they don't know they even exist, what they do, or how to properly call them

Don't take this the wrong way (is there a "right way"?), but...
I don't think NQ thinks very far ahead, or considers the unintended consequences of their actions. It's like certain people who look at a problem and only see the surface symptom, completely disregarding everything that feeds into it and the many other symptoms that arise from them.
As far as getting people and orgs to interact, schematics aren't a good way to go. Unless the daily allowance is maintained permanently, or selling ores to NPCs gets expanded on to include higher tiers, then money sinks will dominate:
1. Taxes for placing TCUs can wipe out your savings quick, and it doesn't feed back into the player economy
2. Enough schematics to build just one element, with the things to support building it, is prohibitively expensive, and the money doesn't feed back into the player economy
For a player-driven economy, it is leashed tightly to the system in both income and expenditure. That means that all actions will revolve around the system's economic constraints more than anything the players want or do. They slow everything down artificially by forcing people to spend money that will just disappear from circulation, and then wait days to weeks before they can do it again on any meaningful level; that may be fine for the most casual "I'll only log in once a day for the free money" players, but not the majority of "I actually want to play this game more than a few minutes a day" players.
And some unintended consequences are going to be orgs merging to build up funds quicker via taxes or donations from their membership, forcing smaller orgs to fall farther behind, and solo players to be forced to join an org or spend unreasonable amounts of time trying to build up enough money to do anything of value.
Soloists and small orgs can sell resources, but that's all they can do unless they have enough money to buy the schematics to make anything. Bigger orgs pooling their money won't be buying much from the solos and small orgs, because their members will also be working to build up those same resources, and probably at a discount to the org.
That will drive solos out unless they're hardcore and gluttons for punishment, and small orgs will likely lose membership to the bigger orgs because they just can't compete with the massive income and resource mining.
What they want isn't being addressed by what they do. They're just slapping bandaids on the symptoms and hoping it works, rather than properly diagnosing the issue and recognizing that they're dealing with a problem that bandaids won't solve.
 
Things they've told us about where they want to go don't mesh with where they're pushing it. They want player-owned markets (we all do), but with taxes going to the system, what is the benefit of having any except to place one in more central locations as a free service to the public? They said "no automation," and then they introduced the idea of mining drones. They introduced the space combat system to allow for anything a player could come up with, then decided that players should be restricted to what they could put on a core based on size because the previous (and very logical and efficient cube fighter) designs ruined the experience. It's as though they are focused purely on doing stuff, with little time spent on thinking ahead to how that stuff might be used and abused by players. Like scientists building a new and experimental bomb to blow up a massive asteroid, they don't think about or see the obvious other uses that they should.
 
On that note, I would suggest doing more outreach to the community to come up with that stuff. The game is sold as very player-driven, but based on the economy thus far, including taxes for market use and territory claims, and now including schematics, the efficacy of "player-driven" is suspect. So get more player input about "how might this be abused" and "what alternate uses might this have that we don't intend" issues, as well as "what solutions to these (specified) problems exist, which make the most sense for the type of game we're trying to create" (and loop back to the first two question sets).
 
Schematics could be a potentially good idea, but not as-is. Where's the player-driven aspect, or is it meant to artificially slow everything down to fit some unreasonable demand that development be slow (you want the game to have a long life, but this is not the way to do it)? Introduce a research aspect. Allow players to create schematic copies. (This is the future, not the past, but even in the distant past a person could copy blueprints, and today a person can copy digital and physical designs easily enough; what is so special about the schematics that they must only be bought from the system?) Come up with some creative solution, and then bounce it around the community to hammer out "how might this go wrong" and "what can be improved" details. Don't just throw something out that you spent days/weeks/months working on, only to find that people are creative and intelligent, causing you untold headaches and wasted time...and certainly don't repeat that same mistake time after time. It is insulting to us that you don't respect our ability to think beyond the level of single-function programs. It's also a waste of your time and money, which could have been better spent with a little more time planning for even the most basic ways that new features would be used beyond their intended functions. Moving the game forward is important, but so is taking the time to consider unintended consequences.
 
As critical as I am, I still think the developers are doing a good job. Some real and major issues to work out, but DU is a worthy venture.

This is the worst case scenario. Where the official response to an issue that has been plaguing the general community for the longest time is "It's not our problem" until the devs get hit by it.

Can you see what kind of precedence you are placing by putting yourselves ABOVE the players this way? SPECIALLY since there was NOTHING in the rules stating that this would be a violation.

Simply assuming that people will work by your own definition of "common sense" is folly. Specially when your view excludes the "common sense" of other people in the first place.

My own interpretation of "common sense" here, is that if you allow one person to exploit the system in unintended ways against another player, you should expect this kind of behavior to apply to EVERYONE. you included. If you fail to protect yourselves properly against this, then it falls strictly to YOU for failing to do so. If you do not like this, then you need to apply and enforce stricter rules protecting EVERYONE from these unlawful exploits.

Heed my warning: If you are going to play favorites, this project will end in bankrupcy.

The proper way to handle this, would be a slap on the wrist of the people responsible, and working on fixing the issue for everyone.

I'm sure it's been beat to death with a herring, but lighting. NQ's intentions were good with trying to make things less stressful flying at night and dark places, but they made it pointless to have lights regardless of environment. So here's my idea:
Scale back the ambient lighting, or remove it entirely and give us a "night vision" mode on our super-advanced suits (that also apparently keep us fed, breathing, sane from lack of sleep, etc), and then improve the ability of lights to actually produce light over a longer range (without bleaching through walls or the ground).
 
Explanation:
As described above, lights are pointless regardless of environment. You don't need a flashlight when mining anymore; the pitch indicator is great, but you can't see it so easy with the flashlight on, especially in brighter soils. You don't need light elements on your constructs anymore. Lights can help better pinpoint your construct in space or dark soils, but we now have luminescent white (but no other color. Much sad face) voxels for that, so they are completely unnecessary. Whether you are underground, on the surface, hiding deep in a labyrinth of corridors and rooms in your construct, in a panic room in your super destroyer in space, or anywhere else, the sun bleaches through and lights your surroundings enough to see everything as though it was at least an overcast/rainy day, even giving a sun "reflection" on any surface that is ~orthogonal to it (this is especially annoying in space, when I'm pointing directly away from the sun and getting glare in my piloting cabin that makes my transparent screen unreadable...and yeah, I could make it a normal screen, but stop making excuses for problems. That translucent screen is in front of the forward window so that I can see where I'm going and watch important stats, and smaller screens out of my direct field of view get blocked by the default UI). Added to that, you see the reflection of the nebula wherever you are, whether above ground, km below with no sky access, or in your labyrinthine constructs with no outside visibility, which completely throws off aesthetics. (Want a mirror in your bathroom? Too bad, it's a viewing portal to space!)
The overall effect is that there might as well be no night or day, but a constant bleh of medium-to-high lighting differences. There might as well be no lights, as well, no matter how deeply you dig or how thick and dark your walls.
 
Justification and response:
Some people have said they love the change because of night flying and trying to find space stations in the dark. I hate to be "that guy," but get over it. Night time and space are dark. That's why we invented lights, and that's why we invented night vision systems (like "thermal" and "infrared" goggles/cameras). The nebula is great and adds lots of flavor to the place, but it shouldn't be so pervasive that you can see it reflected anywhere at any time on most semi-reflective+ surfaces, nor should it light up the solar system. At most, it should provide aesthetic value and contrast (like in space, contrasting your ship against the void). Similar with the sun, it shouldn't be reflecting off anything on the other side of a planet and inside a fully enclosed room. Improving the ability of lights to perform their intended function, and giving a toggled night vision system, would make night and space flying doable without detracting from the game's realism or aesthetics, and complaints about such a change would become void; best of both worlds.
 
Others have suggested similar ideas, but it can't be overstated how much the new lighting has adversely impacted gameplay. Some people are happy because they can see at night and in space, but they should have been asking for improvements to physical lights and a night vision toggle system for your suit (and learning important lessons about the dangers of night time/space navigation, and the need for quality lighting/detection elements/systems, like telemeters that have longer ranges to allow for coders to create LiDAR programs), not cheering for something that is a massive eyesore and big inconvenience for those of us who respect the psychological, aesthetic, and logistical impacts/aspects of darkness. (Want to build an escape scenario that is spooky? Hard to do when you can see EVERYTHING with only weaksauce shadows.)

I'm sure it's been beat to death with a herring, but lighting. NQ's intentions were good with trying to make things less stressful flying at night and dark places, but they made it pointless to have lights regardless of environment. So here's my idea:
Scale back the ambient lighting, or remove it entirely and give us a "night vision" mode on our super-advanced suits (that also apparently keep us fed, breathing, sane from lack of sleep, etc), and then improve the ability of lights to actually produce light over a longer range (without bleaching through walls or the ground).
 
Explanation:
As described above, lights are pointless regardless of environment. You don't need a flashlight when mining anymore; the pitch indicator is great, but you can't see it so easy with the flashlight on, especially in brighter soils. You don't need light elements on your constructs anymore. Lights can help better pinpoint your construct in space or dark soils, but we now have luminescent white (but no other color. Much sad face) voxels for that, so they are completely unnecessary. Whether you are underground, on the surface, hiding deep in a labyrinth of corridors and rooms in your construct, in a panic room in your super destroyer in space, or anywhere else, the sun bleaches through and lights your surroundings enough to see everything as though it was at least an overcast/rainy day, even giving a sun "reflection" on any surface that is ~orthogonal to it (this is especially annoying in space, when I'm pointing directly away from the sun and getting glare in my piloting cabin that makes my transparent screen unreadable...and yeah, I could make it a normal screen, but stop making excuses for problems. That translucent screen is in front of the forward window so that I can see where I'm going and watch important stats, and smaller screens out of my direct field of view get blocked by the default UI). Added to that, you see the reflection of the nebula wherever you are, whether above ground, km below with no sky access, or in your labyrinthine constructs with no outside visibility, which completely throws off aesthetics. (Want a mirror in your bathroom? Too bad, it's a viewing portal to space!)
The overall effect is that there might as well be no night or day, but a constant bleh of medium-to-high lighting differences. There might as well be no lights, as well, no matter how deeply you dig or how thick and dark your walls.
 
Justification and response:
Some people have said they love the change because of night flying and trying to find space stations in the dark. I hate to be "that guy," but get over it. Night time and space are dark. That's why we invented lights, and that's why we invented night vision systems (like "thermal" and "infrared" goggles/cameras). The nebula is great and adds lots of flavor to the place, but it shouldn't be so pervasive that you can see it reflected anywhere at any time on most semi-reflective+ surfaces, nor should it light up the solar system. At most, it should provide aesthetic value and contrast (like in space, contrasting your ship against the void). Similar with the sun, it shouldn't be reflecting off anything on the other side of a planet and inside a fully enclosed room. Improving the ability of lights to perform their intended function, and giving a toggled night vision system, would make night and space flying doable without detracting from the game's realism or aesthetics, and complaints about such a change would become void; best of both worlds.
 
Others have suggested similar ideas, but it can't be overstated how much the new lighting has adversely impacted gameplay. Some people are happy because they can see at night and in space, but they should have been asking for improvements to physical lights and a night vision toggle system for your suit (and learning important lessons about the dangers of night time/space navigation, and the need for quality lighting/detection elements/systems, like telemeters that have longer ranges to allow for coders to create LiDAR programs), not cheering for something that is a massive eyesore and big inconvenience for those of us who respect the psychological, aesthetic, and logistical impacts/aspects of darkness. (Want to build an escape scenario that is spooky? Hard to do when you can see EVERYTHING with only weaksauce shadows.)

1600's: Galileo uses a telescope to observe celestial bodies
1700's: many improvements to telescopes; many discoveries about the solar system
1800's: larger telescope made
1900's: telescopes improved and launched into space
Early 2000's: more telescope improvements and more space telescopes, including one meant for deep space
Modern Era of the DU universes: ships that can travel at great speeds; the ability to magic ore from the ground into a Bag of Holding; wireless container connections that magic stuff between containers and wherever you want to put them; teleporters; anti-gravity generators; force fields; scanners that will tell you how much of what types of ore are in the immediate area (territory)...but the only way to explore the solar system and galaxy is to physically travel through it and see everything in person.
 
There should be an element, or series of elements, that can be used to detect celestial bodies in a radius or cone (or separate elements for short range radius and long range cone). If unknown planets exist, we should be able to find them without relying on luck or days/weeks/months of staring at a screen scanning space as you travel from corner to corner in parallel paths 2-300 SU apart in all axial directions. “Space [...] is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." If we have rockets and ore scanners and the ability to travel between universes, we should at a bare minimum have tools for exploration that extend beyond just our own eyeballs. We have PvP radars, but no non-PvP (scriptable) radars. We have short-range telemeters, but nothing that could be used from kilometers away to get a LiDAR scan (like for night time travel). Exploration was one of the selling points of the game, yet it doesn't exist in a meaningful way.
 
We should have tools for exploration, and reasons to explore. Discovering new planets is great, but must that information be shared with the whole community once it is found? Maybe the discoverer wants to have their own corner of the universe for as long as possible, maybe to exploit resources before the rush begins. What about about exploring the planets? What about oceans? Beyond just finding ore deposits or caves that are mostly just neat aesthetics, exploration has no meaning in this game, and there are no tools beyond ore scanners to make exploration about more than just resource hunting. With space, telescopes or radar-like elements would fill that role, giving individuals/orgs the ability to explore, and either share their results or keep them secret. With oceans, sonar or some other device that gives you an image of what's around you. All of these exploration scans could be displayed on a screen/widget (or, better yet, a 3D holographic device), and be scriptable by providing raw data...because LUA is another selling point of the game that is being downplayed (rumor has it that people complain about it being OP...but so is anything else if you don't have the skills. Piloting is OP if you can't fly or have no interest; it's not fair that others can move planet to planet when you're stuck relying on their skills to get you places. Same illogic applies to scripting).
 
Maybe other players can suggest exploration options, but it's something that I found seriously lacking.

I'm sure it's been beat to death with a herring, but lighting. NQ's intentions were good with trying to make things less stressful flying at night and dark places, but they made it pointless to have lights regardless of environment. So here's my idea:
Scale back the ambient lighting, or remove it entirely and give us a "night vision" mode on our super-advanced suits (that also apparently keep us fed, breathing, sane from lack of sleep, etc), and then improve the ability of lights to actually produce light over a longer range (without bleaching through walls or the ground).
 
Explanation:
As described above, lights are pointless regardless of environment. You don't need a flashlight when mining anymore; the pitch indicator is great, but you can't see it so easy with the flashlight on, especially in brighter soils. You don't need light elements on your constructs anymore. Lights can help better pinpoint your construct in space or dark soils, but we now have luminescent white (but no other color. Much sad face) voxels for that, so they are completely unnecessary. Whether you are underground, on the surface, hiding deep in a labyrinth of corridors and rooms in your construct, in a panic room in your super destroyer in space, or anywhere else, the sun bleaches through and lights your surroundings enough to see everything as though it was at least an overcast/rainy day, even giving a sun "reflection" on any surface that is ~orthogonal to it (this is especially annoying in space, when I'm pointing directly away from the sun and getting glare in my piloting cabin that makes my transparent screen unreadable...and yeah, I could make it a normal screen, but stop making excuses for problems. That translucent screen is in front of the forward window so that I can see where I'm going and watch important stats, and smaller screens out of my direct field of view get blocked by the default UI). Added to that, you see the reflection of the nebula wherever you are, whether above ground, km below with no sky access, or in your labyrinthine constructs with no outside visibility, which completely throws off aesthetics. (Want a mirror in your bathroom? Too bad, it's a viewing portal to space!)
The overall effect is that there might as well be no night or day, but a constant bleh of medium-to-high lighting differences. There might as well be no lights, as well, no matter how deeply you dig or how thick and dark your walls.
 
Justification and response:
Some people have said they love the change because of night flying and trying to find space stations in the dark. I hate to be "that guy," but get over it. Night time and space are dark. That's why we invented lights, and that's why we invented night vision systems (like "thermal" and "infrared" goggles/cameras). The nebula is great and adds lots of flavor to the place, but it shouldn't be so pervasive that you can see it reflected anywhere at any time on most semi-reflective+ surfaces, nor should it light up the solar system. At most, it should provide aesthetic value and contrast (like in space, contrasting your ship against the void). Similar with the sun, it shouldn't be reflecting off anything on the other side of a planet and inside a fully enclosed room. Improving the ability of lights to perform their intended function, and giving a toggled night vision system, would make night and space flying doable without detracting from the game's realism or aesthetics, and complaints about such a change would become void; best of both worlds.
 
Others have suggested similar ideas, but it can't be overstated how much the new lighting has adversely impacted gameplay. Some people are happy because they can see at night and in space, but they should have been asking for improvements to physical lights and a night vision toggle system for your suit (and learning important lessons about the dangers of night time/space navigation, and the need for quality lighting/detection elements/systems, like telemeters that have longer ranges to allow for coders to create LiDAR programs), not cheering for something that is a massive eyesore and big inconvenience for those of us who respect the psychological, aesthetic, and logistical impacts/aspects of darkness. (Want to build an escape scenario that is spooky? Hard to do when you can see EVERYTHING with only weaksauce shadows.)

I'm sure it's been beat to death with a herring, but lighting. NQ's intentions were good with trying to make things less stressful flying at night and dark places, but they made it pointless to have lights regardless of environment. So here's my idea:
Scale back the ambient lighting, or remove it entirely and give us a "night vision" mode on our super-advanced suits (that also apparently keep us fed, breathing, sane from lack of sleep, etc), and then improve the ability of lights to actually produce light over a longer range (without bleaching through walls or the ground).
 
Explanation:
As described above, lights are pointless regardless of environment. You don't need a flashlight when mining anymore; the pitch indicator is great, but you can't see it so easy with the flashlight on, especially in brighter soils. You don't need light elements on your constructs anymore. Lights can help better pinpoint your construct in space or dark soils, but we now have luminescent white (but no other color. Much sad face) voxels for that, so they are completely unnecessary. Whether you are underground, on the surface, hiding deep in a labyrinth of corridors and rooms in your construct, in a panic room in your super destroyer in space, or anywhere else, the sun bleaches through and lights your surroundings enough to see everything as though it was at least an overcast/rainy day, even giving a sun "reflection" on any surface that is ~orthogonal to it (this is especially annoying in space, when I'm pointing directly away from the sun and getting glare in my piloting cabin that makes my transparent screen unreadable...and yeah, I could make it a normal screen, but stop making excuses for problems. That translucent screen is in front of the forward window so that I can see where I'm going and watch important stats, and smaller screens out of my direct field of view get blocked by the default UI). Added to that, you see the reflection of the nebula wherever you are, whether above ground, km below with no sky access, or in your labyrinthine constructs with no outside visibility, which completely throws off aesthetics. (Want a mirror in your bathroom? Too bad, it's a viewing portal to space!)
The overall effect is that there might as well be no night or day, but a constant bleh of medium-to-high lighting differences. There might as well be no lights, as well, no matter how deeply you dig or how thick and dark your walls.
 
Justification and response:
Some people have said they love the change because of night flying and trying to find space stations in the dark. I hate to be "that guy," but get over it. Night time and space are dark. That's why we invented lights, and that's why we invented night vision systems (like "thermal" and "infrared" goggles/cameras). The nebula is great and adds lots of flavor to the place, but it shouldn't be so pervasive that you can see it reflected anywhere at any time on most semi-reflective+ surfaces, nor should it light up the solar system. At most, it should provide aesthetic value and contrast (like in space, contrasting your ship against the void). Similar with the sun, it shouldn't be reflecting off anything on the other side of a planet and inside a fully enclosed room. Improving the ability of lights to perform their intended function, and giving a toggled night vision system, would make night and space flying doable without detracting from the game's realism or aesthetics, and complaints about such a change would become void; best of both worlds.
 
Others have suggested similar ideas, but it can't be overstated how much the new lighting has adversely impacted gameplay. Some people are happy because they can see at night and in space, but they should have been asking for improvements to physical lights and a night vision toggle system for your suit (and learning important lessons about the dangers of night time/space navigation, and the need for quality lighting/detection elements/systems, like telemeters that have longer ranges to allow for coders to create LiDAR programs), not cheering for something that is a massive eyesore and big inconvenience for those of us who respect the psychological, aesthetic, and logistical impacts/aspects of darkness. (Want to build an escape scenario that is spooky? Hard to do when you can see EVERYTHING with only weaksauce shadows.)