I've played the game, it's on my regular muds list in Vipmud and I will certainly be playing again.
That being said, it is true Cm isn't quite as compulsive as some games I've tried, so I'll try and a few things that I've found missing in the game.
The first, and one of the most major things for me, is variety in progression.
cm has a lot of activities with well written descriptions and unique equipment.
The problem is, once you've done an activity for the first time, the activity itself becomes slightly rote.
This is because a large percentage of activities devolve to go to location x, type in a command, wait to get a given resource then type in another command.
Other than occasionally fixing errors with harvesting or trash collecting equipment, there isn't much variation in what you actually have to do while carrying out the activity, you can't be suddenly surprised, or for that matter, suddenly rewarded by something else.
There are a few notable exceptions, particularly those activities like dangerous package delivery that involve a little ground combat, however there should really be more of this, more need to actually be engaged with what your doing, different levels of rewards, and try puzzle or fight your way past different circumstances.
After all, something like asteroid mining should involve a little more than just finding an asteroid and waiting, what about cave ins? what about random space junk that might need blowing away, what about suddenly finding valuable mineral remains or bits of dead aliens that need carefully scooping out?
When doing some of the water based activities, what about suddenly finding people floundering in the water you'd need to rescue (rather than having the search command).
Variety is the spice of life, and many of the cm activities need a little spiccing methinks.
This brings me on to the second point, that is combat.
Having combat in asteroid fields was a great idea, the problem is space combat in cm is not exactly the most tactical kind, generally it's a matter of going in one direction, blasting away with whatever weapons you have hoping that the enemy's fire power or detections don't overwhelm your systems.
it'd be great if space combat was slower and more tactical, and less based on how quickly you can type, not to mention more integrated into the rest of the game and different activities, though as this has been mentioned before I won't say too much.
A third issue for me is questing, The game has quests and they are fun, especially those that come with ground combat, but more quests would be nice, especially giving you a reason to explore different planets and wander around, indeed not just quest, but random items to find or harvest in different locations, giving you a reason to see a lot of the great world cm has to offer.
This also goes with the idea of expanding the ground combat system and making gameplay there more tactically based, since it'd feel much better to have say the possibility of finding something valuable lying around on a hostile alien world if there were hostile aliens ready to leap out and get you .
I do know there is a little of this later in the game with base attacking and maybe exploring and such, but given all the places you go, from where humanity was at war with the Kaitsar to dodgy space ports, comit chunks etc, a little more variety and danger would be appreciated.
Finally one thing I will confess that really! gets up my nose in cm is the need for ship upgrades. If I buy any! new ship I must spend a very long time indeed running from place to place to place purchicing so many upgrades for different activities. This also meakes having ships destroyed an incredible inconvenience.
It's not the financial cost here, it's the cost of time, especially when you have to run around so many shops.
it would be great to have a way keep track of your ship upgrades between vessels and basically just have "some of those"
Again, I know it's possible to do some of this when you have your own factory (something I will be seeing about rather soon in the game myself), but having an option to protect upgrades would be really nice, especially if ship combat gets over hauled, the galaxy becomes more dangerous and your in more danger of losing your ship.
Okay, methinks I've rambled enough.
be sure I will be back on cm myself soon enough, (I really fancy trying exploration). but hopefully you've found some of these thoughts useful.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)