Hi Excession,
I'm glad you're enjoying the game! There's some good ideas in here. I've thought of some of them, partially built a few and probably won't build a few. As a mostly one-person team, for each release I ask myself: What's the coolest thing that I can build, test, release and maintain in the least amount of time? This allows me to release pretty big content updates each month! But it also means that many of the features will never be as deep or flashy as a bigger team could build.
Drag/Drop Equip, Schematics and Inventory: I really wanted to build an RPG-style inventory where you can drag items to your ship. However, that means that every weapon would a unique inventory icon. Every ship would need custom slots and art (because they all have different turret configurations). And the complexity of that code would be way harder to build, test and maintain. So I compromised with a UI that is easy to test for bugs, allows me to build more ships and weapons and is functional. Another consideration with this is that Masteroid actually can run on monitors as small as 1024x768. But that also means that really complex UI simply won't fit. That being said, I DO need to show some stats on weapon drain. All the info is technically there but you have to calculate it yourself right now.
Mission Indicator: Definitely going to build this. I just built missions in the last month so that's brand new. I want to add a button next to the Warp Menu button that shows your current mission.
Faction Status: Like missions, this changed a ton in the last month. I do have some triggered consequences in the game for low status but the chances of it happening are probably a bit too low. I plan to add a lot more missions, weapons, ships and events that are based on your faction standing!
Different Resources: Some of your ideas here are really great. I have thought about this a lot but haven't decided which way to go. I thought about making some weapons only available through blueprints that you have to gather materials for. Asteroids could drop totally different types or resources or mining any asteroid could have a chance to drop a more rare material required by blueprints. I'm probably going to build something like this but it's a pretty huge component and I have some other surprises happening first :)
Collect Weapons From Destroyed ships: I've thought about this a lot...if I implement it, it might be a liklihood to drop a blueprint that you have to have manufactured at a station.
Other Upgrades: I'm thinking about other slottable equipment types. For instance the player could buy a "Faction Targeting System" after a certain level that keeps you from accidentally hitting (or being shot by) friendly ships.
A lot of good ideas here. This month I'm focusing on making some combat improvements and enhancements. I'm also working on adding some interesting stuff to Sectors. I'll keep this stuff in mind and see where it fits in!
Thanks for playing,
Justin