Walt Crew will no longer leave a weapon or other part that runs out of power/ammo if there is already someone coming to deliver power/ammo to it.
I never knew how badly I wanted this until it happened!
Heavy Laser Opinion + Suggestions: Heavy laser looks cool - I personally prefer the looks of the simultaneous firing mode! I think it's reasonably balanced, though very, very bland (it's basically just 3 laser blasters). I would suggest making the heavy laser more interesting, possibly long range + high projectile speed + low damage (long range precision, but low damage), or drastically increased cost, power consumption, and damage per heavy laser (compact but expensive, would also make larger reactors more useful when they happen). Or rapid fire burst with a long cooldown period (strafing runs maybe?), or who knows what.
Penetration Suggestion: I know I brought this up before, but I really think it's worth trying out 0 impact damage on cannons (but increased penetration damage and normal shield damage). This emphasizes penetration and internal damage, which IMO is more interesting than just picking off weapons. (0 impact damage on railguns is probably trickier, and IMO would benefit from a more complicated solution like non-linear damage decay/multiple penetration values/a secondary invisible projectile, which might be more work than it's worth.)
Penetration Suggestion: I know I brought this up before too, but I also think it's worth trying having parts lose penetration resistance as they lose health. Realism reasons aside, this is important to prevent overkill, and also makes penetration resist less binary. I'm not certain if these two changes are good ideas, but I definitely think they're worth getting a feel for
Penetration Bug? + Suggestion: yet another thing related to penetration - railgun shots can penetrate shields without destroying them if they impact a part/armor before hitting the shield. This is actually fairly common with laser triangles (laser turrets often stick out from the shield a little), depending on the railgun length. To fix this, I would suggest calculating shield damage like penetration damage (scaling with penetration), which would make a lot of sense to do anyway if impact damage is removed.
Cannon Suggestion: For weapon diversity's sake, I would suggest not buffing the projectile speed on large cannons (or buffing it by less). Low projectile speed increases the effectiveness of alpha strikes (a unique and interesting mechanic), and keeps small and large cannons from feeling too similar. IMO a large cannon barrage should be hard to land, but devastating if it hits.
Cannon Suggestion: Increase cannon health by an additional 25% (total of +50%). The current +25% is noticeable, but IMO cannons still feel fairly fragile, not tough and armored like their visual. No opinion on cannon damage/overall balance yet, since I'm hoping to see how they feel with 0 impact damage.
Railgun Opinion: Railguns might be too strong, given their respectable damage and very powerful knockback. Though I'd want to hear what other people say before suggesting anything. Balance between large and small railguns seems much more reasonable now, though it will probably never be perfect.
Railgun Suggestion: I like nop's suggestion from a while ago about making railguns start a fire when they run out of penetration. Little balance impact, but fire has been forgotten for too long and it fits the theme that ammo weapons start fires. Just a random suggestion, nothing important.
Ion Beam Opinion: If ion beams are getting too weak - personally I think they're still plenty good, plus the ion prism is coming - but if they are too weak I would rather nerf other weapons than buff the ion beams, otherwise you get power creep.
Burst Thruster Opinion + Suggestion: I don't anticipate burst thrusters being kept on 100% of the time except in niche cases, mostly because of the power drain. But if this is an issue, maybe prevent resupply while boost is active (because the room fills with a hazardous plasma?). On a side note, it would be nice to have graphics indicating power drain while inactive, and instant drain when boost is turned off. Maybe some kind of "plasma exhaust" animation.
UI Suggestion: it would be nice to use the attack command to target yourself. Not important, but I see no reason not to (unless it's extra dev work). For those cheapskates who want to save money on explosive charges.
Engine Room Bug: engine rooms REDUCE burst thruster power consumption, not increase it. I'm almost certain that's not intended.
Piloting Bugs: I also noticed the bug nop brought up, where ships don't play nice with ramming commands. It seems like ships don't want to turn until they're stationary, which can be extremely annoying. I also noticed that the strafe command behaves strangely with diagonal ships, though I haven't had time to confirm this yet.
Most of this stuff is just my opinion on what would be fun/reasonable, take it with a grain of salt
