Huge post coming up. I tried to be constructive and keep the senseless bashing to a minimum, I really did, ok? But this is all I can do.
My problem with cr is the whole way activities work. Almost every activity has a level cap, and once you reach it, the rewards you get from that activity stop skaling with your level. I know why this was done, because in the first weeks after launch you could basically get hundreds of levels from just dredging or volcano harvesting, which are both two ridiculously easy activities. Unfortunately though, this leads to the horrible situation you have now. There are about 80 activities spread across 1800 levels, but you will probably end up only doing about 30 of them since all the other ones are either too much of a pain to do because of risks or too much efort for too little gain, or they're group activities. Group activities really aren't practical if you have to look for players in a very specific level range in order to do them. it might work if cr was a much bigger game, but with an average of about 20 people on at any time most of which are overleveled dinosaurs, there is no point to them.
Most of the time it just seems like all these activities were added in so the hosts could say "look we have over 80 unique activities which are all totally challenging and fun to do!"
The way activities are spred out is another drawback. Up until level 200 or so, you always have about three activities you can choose from. After that though, things start getting more and more linear. By level 600, you're restricted to star studying, because it's the only activity that pays decently and isn't stupidly hard or meant to be done in a group.
This really doesn't get much better. Level 1100 is where star core activities become a thing, and the only thing that gets you some levels, though the star core module is a bitch to replace if it ever breaks which can happen easily if you make just one mistake.
If you use coring to grind your way all the way to 1500, you get to do star rescuing which is basically the same reaction game you play while extracting gas from cores, just with different names and less risk involved. How it continues after that I don't know, but leveling probably doesn't get any less dull.
I've said this before, I'll say it again. It's not about how many activities you can brainstorm, or how hard your activities are. It's about making those that are there engaging and fun to play, while leaving options for team players and those to like to go solo. I'd rather have 10 rewarding and involved activities like in the case of sc than 80 random, nonsensical and repetitive forms of busywork.
Finally, I'd like to conclude this activity rant thingy by saying that most of cr's activities just make little sense for a pilot. This is one thing I never got a good explanation for on the game. Why does a pilot trained to fly starships also have to dig for gems, pick up trash, dredge even more trash and drive a boat? There's supposed to be an academy pilots graduate from, but let me ask, what the heck do they learn there if you have to train skills like starship movement just to be able to... erm, pilot?
The hosts responsible for designing and writing new activities obviously don't grasp some of the scientiffic concepts they use when justifying the story or mechanics of activities. Take dark matter mining. Yes, we don't know how to find dark matter IRL. But I can tell you that there's probably no such thing as a dark matter mining sight you build bases on and harvest, because right now, all dark matter mining is is a more fancy form of asteroid mining.
Another example of broken mechanics is ship upgrades. More specifically, activity related upgrades. How can a 100 + room sized battleship with maxed hull, shields, defenses, cloak, every single weapon in every single weapon room, and 20 cargo bays get every extraction and collection module known to the races? Where does it all go? Things like that need to be stored while not operational, and the very fact ships can even take off apparently means that either whatever engine and power generation tech is used is unreasonably powerful, or there's some overkill miniaturisation going on. The latter is highly unlikely though since the various activity messages indicate the equipment used is very heavy (drills, propelers, laser arrays etc).
There are some narative questions which never got resolved either. What are the dimensions of the sectors you're going in? How big is a coordinate unit? And why, for heaven's sake has everyone seemingly agreed to expand to the north and only to the north? The game attempts to justify this by saying that vacus and droid space are located to galactic east and west, while the star disaster has formed star fields above and black holes below.
This model, however, is faulty in several points.
1: If two of the enemy races have cut the allied races off from any expansion, it should be logical even to the chronically inept that the two could easily join forces and force the allies to fight a war on at least two fronts, since the other two enemy races could just as well attack them from a different directions.
Failing this, possibly because the droids have a senseless wish to kill all life that isn't them, the location of ally space would still mean a huge disadvantage because they'd still have to fight at least two wars simultaniously. So even if the vacus and droids were bitter enemies, one of them should be able to break through and employ planetary distruction technologies which are very prevalent in the cr universe.
2: Somewhere in cr's help files, it is stated that expantion southwards is not conducted because everyone believes that portion of space is cursed, simply because a colony was lost there. This makes no sense for two reasons.
Firstly, the year is 2493 or whatever and you'd expect at least the human culture to have advanced beyond such tryvial things. After all, in the 1960s, apollo 1 took off but then burst into flames killing all three astronauts on board. We didn't believe the moon was cursed after that, and landed there in 1969. You'd think after centuries to forget the loss of the colony, they'd try another push to the south.
Secondly, there is no reason for the other races to share the same belief, especially not for the mutariansi which acording to lore and events were discovered in 2491. They weren't even in the picture when the colony was lost. And even if the entire general population of allied space was of the same opinion, it would only take one group of determined pilots with lots of resources to strike out on their own.
3: Space is really freaking huge. So the vacus and droid teritories must have an end, too. Right now though it seems as if all three factions expand at the exact same rate which fails to make sense to me. Droids should be able to expand faster, since they are an eficient race (or they're supposed to be), and it's said that vacus breed very quickly. Unless they build many space stations within their own teritories, or simply so many die for the war effort, they would run out of room quickly.
4: I can't imagine how the star disaster spread through nearly the entire known universe and only left just enough for the races to exist. Conclusion: The star fields and black hole fields must have an end somewhere. Right now, they don't. The game just doesn't let you go further unless you have coring equipment, which lets you enter star sectors.
Some other stuff that just doesn't work.
5: What is it with all the sectors being exactly the same distance apart? It looks like each sector is a solar system in its own right, because most sectors have at least one star and one planet in them. That's not how space works.
6: Alienated humans. In the world help file for Temreth, it says that a population of humans was living there when it was discovered. No. Just... no. You can't do that. We have millions of species on this planet alone, and we weren't the only one to develop some form of intelligence. You can't just say Evolution randomly created identical humans on another planet and call it a day. Yes, we have no examples of alien species. But please, if you want to give your planet an interesting stories don't put humans on it pre-discovery!
If that's something you really have to do, say the humans found on the planet were survivers from a failed generation ship project that lost contact with civilization and their origens ended up faiding into legend as the centuries dragged on. Or whatever else that doesn't signify that another humanity evolved here.
One more thing about temreth. The way colonization was handeled is unprecedented. Colonization and first contact is an area the allies should have plenty of experience with based on previous events, but then they go build a city on a mountain and declare themselves gods over the natives, and precede to enslave them.
7: Seriously, dragons? Motherfucking dragons?
Cr justifies the existence of space dragons by trying to incorparate them into earth history. Ok, that's still manageable. But then you have these very same dragons, which are supposed to be pretty huge, sitting on human sized sofas, lying in beds, flying around in aircraft which are described as tiny and cramped for everyone, and generally doing things that would cause complications do to their physiology IRL.
The thing about them being able to breathe fire just doesn't work. Where does the energy, fuel, and heat for creating fire come from? How did nature go about evolving such a traight without permanently scorching the dragon's mouthes? It just seems to me like the whole fire thing is plain magic, and you don't do that in a space game.
Some closing random points that get on my nerves.
Allowing access to machinery that's capable of destroying pllanets and stations with a few button presses to anyone with a pilot's license is a really bad idea IMO. Technically all any extremist terrorist group would have to do is blow up star command to make the military lose its home base and then just zap their way through the whole of human space, which really isn't too hard considering it's all layed out linearly.
The enemy race's stratigy of war should be unsustainable for even the most efficient workers and breeders. During invasions, the hosts typically send in ships by the hundreds if they last for long enough. Even the smallest vacus fighter contains 2 warriors, and most of the larger ships used during invasions have up to 50 in them, maybe more. Mostly The same for the other enemies. At the rate the enemy loses ships, they should be unable to keep up with production unless they all have somehow developed the tech to 3d print them in which case, the allies would have a disadvantage if you think about how long it takes and how many resources are required for a player to build a ship on their own. If one sdl recruit can sit in their 20 pilot ultra mega titan cruiser of doom and gloom and single handidly clean out a hundred droid intergalactic destroyer cruise thingies in five minutes, something's not being simulated properly. And let's not even begin to talk about the reconstruction system. All you have to do is hit a button and your ship is fully built from nowhere in about 30 seconds, a process which, in the case of a custom ship, takes you forever to complete initially.
Here, I must point to sc again. hats off to them, because their battle mechanics actually make sense. Losing a ship has consequences, and it can be asumed that this counts for the outsiders and IFS as well since they don't send 200 ships into a beacon drop or invasion mission.
Final question, why do you want to farm on a planet that is obviously not suited to it? Terrainia or whatever the farm planet is called is an ice world. The only reason you'd farm here would be for the allies to demonstrate how much they can manipulate nature. I think splitting moons and planets apart is enough to show that.
I used to be a knee like you, then I took an adventurer in the arrow.
