I have a few ideas to make the Domination gamemode more interesting for the Steam release. Some of these have been suggested before, but I'd like to bring them up again cause I think they are important.
1. Ships should face toward the most expensive enemy within a certain range when given no orders (sitting still). At the moment part of what makes Domination mode so hard to play is that often a ship will be killed from behind if you didn't give it an order. This is just frustrating and unfun. I think this is a must-have feature.
2. Since salvaging is going to be implemented I feel a way to integrate it into Domination would make the gamemode more interesting. My idea is that after a ship is destroyed in domination you can send one of your own to go salvage it for resources, which could either be instantly added to your credit total (simpler) or have to be brought back to your spawn point to be used (more complex but more interesting). This would be similar to how reclaim works in games like Supreme Commander, where not only winning a battle is important, but keeping in control of the wreckage is too. This kind of system could lead to a more interesting variety of ships, such as ones specifically designed to rush in and grab salvage, or others to intercept those ships before they can deliver the resources.
3. Maps. Like Nord's suggestion on maps for elimination, maps for Domination mode would drastically improve ship diversity and the importance of large-scale strategy. At the moment, cannons are the ultimate weapon for small ships in Dom, but with effects like slow fields in certain areas on the map the best strategy might change to more long-range weapons. In areas of a map where there are a lot of asteroids a maneuverable ship with thrusters in every direction might be important for moving around the asteroids, etc. I think maps and terrain in general are going to be very important for balancing the speed meta, and they don't have to be as complicated as in Nord's idea.
