...and a dozen customer opinions are crushed... Well Zuul I think you have a good suggestion, though it would be something to think about for future products well down the line. The BC line will only get better with time. Years from now, when that die-hard fan gets his copy in the mail or a gamer makes that impulse buy and picks up "Battlecruiser Command III !", he may very well have his expectations met when he chooses a caste type of diplomat or explorer. The direction of the game at that point may open up to include the wealth of caste (profession) types that are common to sci-fi. Those strange players from UO who spent hours upon hours cutting trees and making furniture, might love to drop down to a planet's surface and spend time making emergency repairs to a damaged facility to improve his ranking. A paramedic called in to help cure a rampant disease on a planet. Helping to colonize a planet, others to build it, people to manage it. How dearly do you think they would want to protect this digitized home of theirs that they built from nothing? Assassins making their way aboard an enemy ship hoping not to be discovered, to make their way to their target to kill them in first-person mode. Scientists sent out to detect strange readings in space or planetside to see if they present a hazard to the nearby system. There are several areas not limited to castes to crack this immense game wide open even more than it already is. Derek may go more ship heavy, giving us ship interiors and design your own ship crazyness. And the persistent world concept is another massive direction (I shudder to think of the flood and quality of posts a persistent world forum would get, dear lord). Derek may shock us all and create another game option of a complety scripted campaign (ala the more "tame" space sims we have now) where you take your young pilot up through the ranks to a commander, dealing only with individual missions, cut scenes, the like. Who knows. To summarize, as my ramblings have come to an end: BC walks an odd line between freedom and control. You can do an amazing amount with the game as long as you put in the time to figure out what it can/can't do and how you do it. Tom / Doc4
