* October
** No way to contact other ships.
   We always have to wait until they contact us. Some ships never do,
   meaning you can never talk to them.
** I always have to scroll down to see the latest message
   Once there are a few messages shown, the newest one is always too
   far down to read right away; I have to scroll it into view.
** The design of the astrogator screen is hard to understand at a glance
   When you fist start the game, the list of locations has only one
   item in it, and it therefore looks like the title on top of an empty
   list; it is not obvious that you can click on it to select it. Both
   I and a friend of mine tripped over this; he discovered that you
   could fly back to the right out of the rings to return, and asked me
   if that was really the only way back. I hadn’t discovered that, but
   I had by that point figured out how astrogation worked, so I could
   explain it to him.
** You can only take one conversational path with every ship
   In many cases this makes perfect sense, because that first choice
   sets the mood of the conversation (threatening, acquiescense,
   etc). However, in other cases it doesn’t make any sense. If two of
   your crew members have a question to ask the ship, you can only ask
   one of them.
** Crew has something to say to _every_ ship they meet
   Every pirate has heard of that one crew member who used to be a
   pirate, and every bounty hunter as well. The one who lost their
   spouse can ask every ship about them (which makes sense though). The
   rest of the time someone on your crew has a personal relationship
   with the ship or the other captain.

   This might be a deliberate choice, so that every conversation gives
   you a chance to find bugs in a new system.
** These two problems combine
   You cannot defuse a pirate attack _and_ ask them about the missing
   spouse.
** Possible problems with the “missing spouse” quest
   In my test game where I was deliberately crashing into huge rocks at
   100m/s I have also had some interesting interactions with this quest
   line.

   I let her ask several passing ships about it, then found an actual
   salvage ship to ask. The salvage ship gave us a “radar return” site
   to visit.

   A few seconds later, before I visited the site, her husband’s crew’s
   bodies showed up on radar. I started picking them up, and found her
   husband’s ship as well. It was abandoned. I had two bumpers and no
   manipulator arm, so I couldn’t salvage it.

   I had some ore chunks in my cargo bay though, so I decided to return
   to Enceladus, buy an arm, and then return to salvage the ship. I
   could do this because although I had no claim drones, I _did_
   nevertheless have a way to return to this exact spot. I knew that it
   was 25km south of the “radar return” site, and 17.6km inward from
   the rim. Easy to find in this case, but this seems like something we
   should have our astrogator track.

   Naturally, I forgot to actually buy the arm.

   I did return to the ship and it was still there, so I went back to
   Enceladus, bought the arm, and returned. This time the ship was
   gone. Is salvaging the ship even necessary? She didn’t comment on
   not finding her husband’s body, or on the fact that we lost track of
   the ship.
** It should be possible to have our astrogator track _any_ abandoned ship
   In my main save I have seen a few abandoned ships that I haven’t
   been able to salvage merely because I was in a ship without a
   manipulator arm. It would be nice if our astrogators could help us
   by keeping track of abandoned ships for us.

   I tried using a claim drone once to be able to return to the same
   location, but the ship wasn’t there when I returned. I’m not sure if
   that is an intentional possibility or not; someone else might have
   salvaged it in the mean time, or if it completely regenerates
   everything when you return (pretty sure it regenerates asteroids at
   least), so the ship would just never be there.
** Haul drones re–adjust the trajectory of a chunk every time you maneuver, even when it isn’t necessary
   The drones are targetting a spot in front of your ship, and will
   adjust the trajectory of any chunk that isn’t going to pass through
   that spot, even if the chunk will still cross the centerline of the
   ship. I suppose it makes sense to adjust the course of any chunk
   that will require a very large redirection once it crosses the
   centerline, which puts an upper bound on the distance from the ship
   where the crossing is acceptable. Perhaps turning the targetted spot
   into a longer region would work better. I feel like it might be
   necessary to draw diagrams in order to discuss this effectively.

   I think that you are aiming for the automated systems to have some
   imperfections for the user to work around. However, there is also a
   slight inaccuracy of drone system’s aim; some of the chunks that it
   sends your way will miss your cargo bay. If you adjust your heading
   in order to catch those chunks, it will cause the drone system to
   adjust the course of every other chunk in the area. If you let the
   chunk miss the drone system will eventually try again. Both of these
   options cause you to spend more drone mass than you want. It almost
   feels spiteful, like the (in–universe) programmer of the drone
   system was deliberately making work for the user.
** AI cannot use Haul drones effectively
   They can equip Haul drones, but they cannot sit still long enough to
   use them effectively. All of their maneuvers trigger an adjustment
   of every chunk their drones are working on. Also, they apparently
   don’t filter the chunks they will tug at all. At least set them to
   filter out chunks less than 2k or something.
** drones will act on chunks before the price is shown in the UI
   Probably just an aesthetic oddity caused because the price fades into view
** No way to see why your crew is happy or sad
   In my main save, all four of them are happy and I have no idea
   why. In my test save they are all sad, and there is a currency
   symbol so I assume that it is because I couldn’t pay them. Either
   way, the crew screen ought to show some details.
** Really hard to understand what the EIAA-1337 autopilot is doing
   I click on an ore chunk, and it heads off in some other direction, etc.
** ELON Interstellor Model E HUD is…
   I like some aspects, but the bling is off the charts and the
   usability is in the tank. I don’t think that every HUD needs to be
   equally useful, but this one seems designed as a cautionary tale of
   design excess rather than as a useful option.
** Enceladus station is ugly
   This one is an odd one; I couldn’t put my finger on it the first few
   times I played the game, but I think you really should think about
   this some. The station in the background is a jumbled mess of
   greeble. The gantry in the foreground is hardly lit at all, and is
   mostly in shadow. What lights exist are all hazard and warning
   lights of various colors; there is no natural lighting or even
   lighting with natural colors. The ship I’m flying is front and
   center in the foreground, but it’s so badly lit as to be invisible.

   The result is just unappealing, and that’s probably not a good first
   impression to make. By contrast, the animation of the dive into the
   rings is very pleasing to me. I love it.
** Autopilots react badly to tuning the thrust of your RCS system
   They appear to expect to get a certain amount of thrust out of them,
   but if they get more or less than that they will fly the ship
   incorrectly. I expect them all to use a trivial PID controller,
   since the integral and derivative terms automatically compensate for
   the measured rate of change of the process variable (heading in this
   case). Or maybe you do use a PID controller, but the derivative term
   is too small.
* November
** I really would like to see more life on the visual feed
   I came across two vilcy during a dive. After I passed them at
   ~100m/s, I could see them on the visual feed for quite some time,
   even once they were off LIDAR. There hadn’t been a hint of their
   presence before they showed up on LIDAR, however. Probably they
   spawn in at the edge of LIDAR range, but that leaves the visual
   feed very lonely most of the time.
** Corpses are extraordinarily tough
   I had one propped between the jaws on my cargo hold, holding them open.
** Alt-tabbing while at Enceladus station takes you to the escape menu
   I suppose that’s not so bad, but when you leave the menu by hitting
   escape it also closes whatever station menu you had open (upgrades,
   tuning, etc).
** It would really be nice to have a bearing on the astrogation screen, in addition to distance.
** Why do phage stations always use both of their side thrusters at once?

