Topic: Balance Attributes, character creation and progression.
Attributes are nice but rather lock you into a role before you even know how to play.
They're one of the few things that also keep this game very similar to that other game and aren't needed.
I propose that the current method of calculating EP cost gets changed. Remove attributes from the game and lower base cost of extensions from 100 to around 56 (Currently the best attributes possible) or to 60 (Will make angry faces appear). ***
This would then mean the character creation could also be made shorter to [Faction] > [Spark] > [Avatar]
The most major change here is that the number of sparks available could be to three and sparks, instead of giving an attribute bonus, would give a game bonuses. The main category for the sparks could be [Combat] [Industry] [Political]. The bonuses could be a percentage bonus to certain game abilities like rate of fire bonus or NIC from assignments or could even be a static extension bonus.
Now sparks could then become more of a game item as well. Your spark is like your robots soul or to put it simply it's the cloud of nanites you use to control every robot you jump into. Switching sparks could be made possible using NIC at 10 Million NIC per change and there could be more sparks available once you enter the game. Meaning that the basic combat spark you get at the start of the game could be updated using NIC/Resources/Building/Spark Patches etc.. to do more than the base spark did but never get lost. So as you play the game you can upgrade your spark to what you're specialised in but always remove a level of update and start again. This would only ever add at most 5% to say mining yield or 5% to weapon cycle time but it could be seen as adding depth to the game.
With attributes removed it more likely that people will cross train without being called noobs but specialisation will ALWAYS have an added bonus.
Now of course with these changes I also suggest making it so anything under level 6 can be lowered to level 1 (Unless it's required as a prerequisite) and that the UI is made better to show the difference between level 1 to 5 and 6+..
Remove character resets but off a one time use EP reset to all accounts if this change is brought into effect.
Simples. Comments would be appreciated.
*** Current Calculations for EP cost:
100 - Primary_Att - (Secondary_Att * 0.5) * Complexity * Level * Multiplier
Multiplie:
If Level 0 to 5 = Multiplier 1
If Level 6 = Multiplier 2
If Level 7 = Multiplier 3
If Level 8 = Multiplier 4
If Level 9 = Multiplier 5
If Level 10 = Multiplier 10
Best attributes 30/28 split. Best EP cost per level = 100 - 30 - (28/2) = 56.