I agree wholeheartedly with the people saying the PvP aspect of GOI needs some love, more content, balance etc. Thoses are truly needed for the game to prosper in time.
I have joined the game two years ago and nearly nothing has changed since then which is a shame because as good as Alliance is gonna be, you don't keep a game alive with PvE content until you give tools for the community to add more contents themself, something that I don't see coming so far. Just look at the Left 4 Dead franchise, second one lived because of the great modding support, now look at the first one or Alien Swarm, they died pretty quickly because of the lack of it and thoses are games supported by Valve, not an indie developper.
PvP is always more important for niche developpers if you want to keep a game alive. From a personal point of view, as exciting as PvE can be it will never be as good PvP for a game like GOI, fighting real players will always be more interesting considering how the game works, crew system, loadouts etc. This game is truly mean to be a PvP game in core, no matter how niche it is.
Spending all your ressources on making PvE content is a terrible decision in my opinion, even more if you do it after having developped the core game which is PvP, going from PvE to PvP developpement would have been fine but not PvP then PvE... This is the best way to loose all your vets that have mastered the mechanics over the year, because PvE content is often considered like an introduction, a tutorial to the rest no matter how good you make it. And the newcomers who will enjoy Alliance will get bored of it after some time and look for PvP as well but if you do not add content to it, everything will fall apart pretty fast.
Also my personal feedback to make the game better as a whole, for everyone, is to expand the tasks an engineer/gunner has to do, most of the time bots can do better because their task is so repetitive in core, there is low skill involved and little reward.
Try to add some depths for using weaponry, more recoil, wind to take in consideration, things like that, make it more like skill shots so a high skilled gunner can keep improving his aim after hours and hours of gameplay. Contrary to right now where you use a gun for 10 min and pretty much will never improve past this point excepted some few special guns. Having different set of munitions is a good idea but it's not enough.
For the enginner, add some new concepts over repairing stuffs, like some QTE that if well executed allow to repair a component faster, or synergies/boosting, if one engineer is hammering a gun with a special tool while someone is shooting, it will shoot faster, or if he is constantly hammering the engine with a special tool the ship will manoeuvre faster. Try to reduce the tools the captain have to boost the ships, and make the enginners have most of them instead. Make them more directly impactful of the ship performance, they should feel always involved and not only active when a component go down, I would like to look outside the ship as an enginner and feel comited in the action, seeing a enemy ship following us, I could decide to improve the speed the best I can or boost the hull on the go, truly helping my capitain directly while executing a non repetitive task, adapting to the situations I am witnessing outside the ship, I will feel important and it will feel truly rewarding.
To go with it and avoid trolling allow the captain to give individual permission to an enginner, like for example as an enginneer I want to use Moonshine on the engine, it could send a quick request to the captain, if he press V for example it allows me to use it. He could also give all time permission via the board interface (where you mute people) to a trusted enginneer on the deck etc. Do a distinction between casual and ranked matches and add the long wanted kick option only in ranked matches.
To summarise you should really try to make thoses jobs more interesting and interdependant that they are right now, create a game in the game where being the pilot is not the only fun/rewarding position of the game and where everyone must work together for the greater good.
Though the game is great for a little indie game and the price I paid for it, I might be asking a bit too much out of you guys, I would like to express my cheer respects and I won't be mad if the game is considered done after Alliance release. After all you are the captain of this ship, and I had already my fair share of fun along the way (I own two accounts, that explains my low level on this one btw).
