I’ve thought of another adjustment to ships - a small one this time. Currently new players start with two fully fueled ships, which is a lot of fuel. Then everyone tells them in chat to sell most of that fuel and buy it back later, which feels almost like a cheat, especially from the point of view of players who don’t realise they can do this, and have already burned a lot of fuel on unnecessary flights by the time someone points it out.
I can see that you don’t want new players to accidentally strand a ship somewhere, because that sucks, so you give them plenty of “safety” fuel. However, even veteran players aren’t immune to this - I once left on a trip without enough fuel to get back, and I’d been playing for a while. Fortunately I could send my other ship to rescue myself. The other day another player managed to get his ship into orbit around a planet without any fuel left, and now it’s stuck there and can’t be refueled.
This got me thinking - as a new feature, you could create a galaxy-wide rescue service. It would work by calculating the amount of fuel you need to get your ship to a destination that you choose, and then you pay the cost of that, plus a fee on top. The game then calculates the time it would take for a rescue ship to fly from the CX (where the service operates from) to your ship, and after that time you get a notification “Ship refueled” and the rescue fuel has appeared in your ship’s tanks. You probably want to “lock” the ship during this time, with a “waiting for fuel” status, or similar.
The fact that you have to wait for the rescue ship to fly to your location, plus the fee on top, means that players can’t use this as a shortcut to buying fuel normally - it’s always going to be cheaper and faster not to get yourself into a situation where you need to be rescued. However, the option is there as a safety net, and it means that maybe new players can start with less fuel.
It also means that my earlier proposal, for everyone to start with only one ship, is not as scary…
I hope this is “fuel” for thought. 