To offset criticism following I must note that as programmer I am very much impressed that something like Pirate Galaxy is written in Java and how lightweight its client. However I would like to address to issues which in my opinion can severly hinder this game growing any more popular. In my biased opinion, fixing this is much more important then bells and whistles which latest patches seem to concentrate on.
NB! Following here is pretty long as it is not meant as easy reading but rather (hopefully) to give some feedback and ideas for game developer how and what to fix to allow PG to prosper.
---> TLDR ...
Even with decades of gaming experience, I have still had great difficulties in adapting to Pirate Galaxy client controls and steering. I can just imagine just how hard it might be for inexperienced gamers. As it is, it seems barely playable. There lot of problems which create constant stress to me and as much I have asked, other players agree.
1) When you select ANY target, your ship instantly starts moving toward target, often turning your ship around and heading opposite direction you are going when all you want to do is to see/scan target or shoot it while running. This also happens when acquiring targets with TAB - which can create horrible graphical lag by flapping camera quickly toward many different directions. Un-checking "Enable Look-At-Target" in settings does not have any effect on that. I really see ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to start movement on target selection and when there is, you should be perfectly able to move ship yourself - or what hell is players function anyways ?
2) It is just recently when I discovered that you can target without starting movement by right-clicking objects. This works unlike any user interface I have used so far (out of hundreds) but it is still better then broken left-click targetting. However it conflicts with ability to steer camera with right-click as it seems to pick up targets now and then even while you firmly holding right button down. It also conflicts ability to click-to-move with right-click for very same reason. Using left-click for those tasks is simply TOO DANGEROUS as it starts movement when you accidentally click on object and turns ship!!!
3) I have had great difficulty of understanding why your ship movement has to be bound to camera direction - reverse would make more sense even when it should be optional. When you check "Disable ship chaser camera" and "Use relative ship controls" in settings, it still turns ship toward camera direction in many occasions, making controlling direction very awkward. It looks totally absurd to me that while using WASD to control ship, it always turns camera first and ship follows half second later, very often turning ship opposite to direction you pointed !?!
4) While using "relative controls", click-to-move is often more reliable way to choose your ships direction due broken WASD. However it usually stops your ship movement first and then starts moving at second or third click only. It also seems to start movement much more slowly then other ways of steering your ship and sometimes walls and corners can catch your ship and set it rotating for while - usually until podded. While your ship is in near high walls or in canyon, clicks often go to inside or atop of invisible walls which definitely should not happen.
5) When there lot of active ships (Mantis) around you, even while there does not seem to be noticeable graphical lag, controlling your ships becomes sluggish or impossible. It is like going through thick jelly. I suggests me that ship controls are not interpreted by client but sent to server for interpretation. This is wrong approach in my opinion as there three kinds of lag in effect, which can create huge differences between client and server viewpoints. In this case it is best to apply user controls based on WHAT IS VISIBLE to user and server should correct, taking closest possible approximation.
6) While clicking on enemies and objects, client very often loses target in next second or picks different target by some reason. My best guess is that it may happen because I am holding right mouse button to steer camera but I have no idea how to avoid that. Also, while shooting at something, when your mouse cursor passes over or even close to other ship (happens most often with Harvesters), it may give it shot or two or switch target to it. It can even happen when that other ship is not visible - possibly due its aura effects showing on your screen.
7) I can not count how many times I have been podded because repeatedly losing my target while using click-to-move, which is only somewhat reliable method of steering. This happens because BOTH mouse buttons try to do contradicting tasks at same time: selecting target and movement. Why could we not have just one (left) mouse button for selecting targets and other one for movement - PLEASE! Camera steering selection in setting should work fine - if it would only steer camera and not pick up random targets while you holding steering button.
8) This may look like minor issue but can still create huge problems for players: ... All ship types but Storm ( battleship ) have "3" for repair and "4" for afterburner which makes switching over to/from that type of ship very painful. Also, second most often used skill key "2" is very tricky to use while operating WASD controls. It would help great deal if collector was either changed or duplicated to something easier to access, like "C" and if you did not have to use on every piece of loot separately. It would be very nice if that could be either changed with option or better yet to make ship skill-bar fully configurable.
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