I'm in since 2012 and I haven't spent a whole car worth of real money, but I reached concierge without any issues by always playing the CCU game and I own a cheap Polaris as well as a cheap Perseus.
I mean spectrum seems to be like a psychiatry, you can't do a reasonable discussion, without the white knights defending even the most stupid decision by CIG possible, so I try my luck here, the sub seems a bit more reasonable.
I'm a space dad myself and if I would have impregnated my girlfriend during the kickstarter, my daughter would now be the same age I was, as I inserted WC4 the first time in my playstation. The dream of having this experience again with current graphics, finally huge space ships and not fighter and carrier are the same size led to where we are now. I'm pretty confident without us "space dads" this project wouldn't have been a success, because space games were officially extinct at that time. Sure what we all jumped in, back in the day technically was Squadron 42. I can't even remember when the multiplayer stuff came into the roadmap. So why is Space Dad in the meantime even grown into an insult for someone who should stop playing or arguing?
The same goes for the hate towards soloing multicrew ships, if there are any discussions with issues, soloing stuff, everyone comes out of the corner, get a crew, these ships are not meant to be used solo, bla bla bla. Who does it hurt when I'm flying a Polaris or even Idris on my own, I mean ok, the Idris can solo still be a threat as the Pilot has weapon access, but if I decide to just fly around with my Polaris and do casual stuff, I'm not a threat to anyone and I also know that I am not capable of using the ship for combat or whatsoever. But the pure amount of people clapping in their hands, when a new change makes it more difficult to just even have fun "solo" is absolutely wild.
With the changes of claiming "empty" ships again with 4.8 and not having the possibility to restock just cannons, flares or PDCs I personally don't have even the credts available to get my Polaris flight ready after a claim. As I can't just restock the guns, restocking would take idk 16 - 20 million auec. That's something my wallet has never seen in all the years I'm playing. Sure I could sell stuff at UEX and be a rich guy fast, but I just play the game and the game is not having a valid income source for the prices of missiles and torps. I don't even want to use them, but they can't be left out on restocking.
I see myself flying my Valk and Carrack more often, no missiles, no issues. But I really like to hear some opinions, from both sides.
(EDIT) To clear something up while seeing many comments going on the soloing section. I'm completely sane here and I don't expect to solo a Polaris. Soloing for me means just flying it around, piloting in this case while having the ship still fully operational. But if I want to shoot a turret, torpedo etc. I need to walk through the ship and do it myself.
And thx for the discussion, this grew larger than expected