Experience

[Trev]

The way experience is gained in this game is... strange, to say the least.

All experience seems to come from kills of pirates and other "enemies". Surely this game is meant to be open-ended and non-linear, except that it's basically forcing you to be a bounty hunter. Surely you should get experience for completing missions (just like "Quests" in regular fantasy RPG's, isn't this meant to be like an RPG?). I know we get some pitiful, useless amount such as 200 exp, surely you should get as much exp for transporting goods from one system all the way to another system and then to the specific planet or station. The experience could also increase the further you have to travel, for example, transporting to the next system should get you the same sort of exp as destroying a basic pirate destroyer, 2 systems away, the same exp as a pirate cruiser or amonkrie destroyer, 3 systems away, similar exp to an amonkrie cruiser, etc. Also, from checking my exp, it seems I get none from killing "friendlies", is this a bug?

Also, I think it's ridiculous the way exp is "awarded" for killing things, surely the percentage of damage you dealt to the ship determines how much exp you deserve. Surely if you deal 63% of the damage the ship sustains before it dies (not just to the hull, but shields and armour too), you deserve 63% of the exp that ship gives. As it is, you can annihilate a ship, taking out all its shields, armour, systems and hull down to 1kt, then it can crash into something, or get shot by someone else and you get ZERO exp. For example, I have just completed the mission to defend the main Freeport spacestation, but got very little exp due to the fact that the spacestation dealt all the killing blows because it fires multiple torps at once and makes it impossible to assure you deal the killing blow.