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Thank you for the kind words. I won't be gone for long. I actually commissioned some more work for this game, so if I went for long, it would be for waste, haha.

I'm glad you mentioned those things! It parallels a lot of balance thoughts I've had, and highlighted some more that I should think about.

1. I also felt that captains and majors are in a good place, but colonels and generals offer too much. I do like that colonels pay enough to make you want to fly back, instead of taking a mission. I wanted that dynamic, where at high ranks, officers offer enough to garner that kind of loyalty. But it's too much right now.
2. I originally wanted to keep subordinate bonus going all the way down, but I think you're right. In the next release, I'll just have it go down one level (so colonels get a bonus from majors, but not captains), which might help with the balance issues above.
3. Sounds like the station type bonus is pretty powerful, but it also seems to be doing a thing I was hoping for, which is change how you choose to play the game. Maybe what I'll do is keep the bonus the same, but reduce the base value of a mission from maybe 1,000 down to 800 or so. That, along with the colonel and general nerf might be pretty good. There will be more nerfs as more scenes are introduced, making morale reduce faster. The thing I'm worried about most is if the (officer rank 3+), (high rank officer), (Starport) or (Headquarters) bonuses were too powerful. Combining them to court a high ranking officer at the Starport of Headquarters can be outrageous.
4. The game length does bother me. My initial calculation was that you should be able to reach a few level 7 or 9 officers by the end of the game. But I think I underestimated how spread out your engagement with the officers have to be. The mechanics also changed a lot since then. I'll have to think about this a bit more. I don't know if lengthening the game is the answer, but it might be. I like your idea better, with relationship levels above 3 only taking 3 relationship points to level up.
5. Good idea about the officers offering the highest level obligations they can. I wanted to keep it really random, but in practice, I think your idea is probably more fun.

I've got a question. Do you play the web version, or the client version? What are your thoughts on the two?

Thanks for taking the time try out this game and giving me your feedback!