This is more a general suggestion to Steve for the future patch, in my opinion the quality of the game in terms of ship projecting, naval organization, components, planetary facilities, missles and so on reached the top level and we are just playing around refining small things, bugs and adding QoL improvements time to time, all good and desiderable.
What I suggest Steve, We (you
) should rework the NPR system, the diplomacy in particular (alliance, wars, tech exchange etc.), in a more intuitive way, maybe even a more simpler and predictable but realistic and interesting system like for example common commercial games (I'm thinking to the diplomacy in the paradox games, EUIV).
I imagine you wanted to design the system in your way, fair enough and you horrifies to the idea of copying other games, but the diplomatic aspect is currently not very intuitive and the NPRs a part from the ship combat which can be challenging are not very interesting in terms of who they are, what they want, their capital, leader, traits, resources so Aurora is often reduced to the destruction of one NPR after another.
Many of the info about NPRs are hidden, there's no interaction except the communication and the few pact available have again little or no impact in the whole picture of a campaign.
What do you think if We (again you
) focuses only on this aspect, for the next big patch, we create a specific 3D where we can collect suggestions and ideas to realize a much deeper diplo system?