I can see it all now... In a few posts, Matt comes by, and with one fell swoop, he states: "No new features will be added to Nova." Or perhaps, "Make your own damned game." Tough choice, that one... Probably both. 
Alpha masks would have been incredibly useful. :frown:
The majority of comments I see here can be worked around, if you use a little creativity. However, some ideas are really good. Of course, you must keep in mind the amount of work, not only for Matt to implement any of these features, but the amount of work you will be adding to the casual TC developer. Adding more exit points, or multiple versions of planets, or any number of features to make the game more complex will make it even harder for independent developers to make a TC. It's hard enough getting good graphics guys... 
Similarly, adding multiple targets, or the ability to control escorts manually, or forming tactics for escorts, or using multiple weapons at once, or other things like that would make the game harder for the end user. I do like the idea of strafing, though...
There is also where adding in so many animations would make it much easier to make it a 3D game, than it would be to render all of the different animations... I used to be kind of mad that you were limited to only one animation type, but I see now that it would have only given me more animating work to do.
I'd really like to see fleets usable in missions, going back in time and negative damage (or perhaps remove the less than zero tests all together, leaving even more undiscovered features?), and user-specified combat ratings, commodity ranges, and expanding the Map's find feature... Mainly because these will only take minor changes to the development tools, and the fact that they are not so much new features as they are expansions of existing ones.
As for my contribution- put back in flares, or, even better, make a new weapon flag that causes it to "attract guided weapons".
~ SpacePirate
(edit: Yeah, and pretty much exactly what mrxak said. ;))
------------------
Eat blazing electric death!
(This message has been edited by SpacePirate (edited 01-11-2004).)
