Pretty sure rewards were removed because they were never actually used for their intended purpose, Haxus mentioned they were just abused so emperors could give themselves infinite free money http://www.hazeron.com/mybb/showthread.p...s#pid10305
There's also the problem that money isn't actually useful at all anymore, there's no research to spend it on, once you buy your EV suit and gun then that's it, and I'm pretty sure yuri gagarin gives you an EV suit if you do rocket training so
In addition, there's also no "progression towards a larger ship", all you need to do is find a basic shuttle in your starting city, fly to a random habitable, colonize it, boom, now you're an emperor again doing emperor things again, unless you specifically restrict yourself to existing cities only, but then there's nothing to do once you get a big ship, colonization (and thus becoming an emperor again) is really the only gameplay, there's nobody and nothing to fight...
Also only sticking to existing cities relies on you intentionally setting up infrastructure to support "company ships" like private security contractors and however crew are recruited
And everything else that exists for citizen players technically only still does as leftovers from the MMO, when you could start the game by joining random players' empires
Maybe if the NPC empires allow us to join under them then this style of play could become more prevalent, but currently the systems in place for it are purely for self-RP and don't really work in a singleplayer environment, unless you really really really really like solo RP I guess
It would be cool if MP returns but that may not happen anytime soon given Haxus chose to prioritize NPC empires first
There's also the problem that money isn't actually useful at all anymore, there's no research to spend it on, once you buy your EV suit and gun then that's it, and I'm pretty sure yuri gagarin gives you an EV suit if you do rocket training so
In addition, there's also no "progression towards a larger ship", all you need to do is find a basic shuttle in your starting city, fly to a random habitable, colonize it, boom, now you're an emperor again doing emperor things again, unless you specifically restrict yourself to existing cities only, but then there's nothing to do once you get a big ship, colonization (and thus becoming an emperor again) is really the only gameplay, there's nobody and nothing to fight...
Also only sticking to existing cities relies on you intentionally setting up infrastructure to support "company ships" like private security contractors and however crew are recruited
And everything else that exists for citizen players technically only still does as leftovers from the MMO, when you could start the game by joining random players' empires
Maybe if the NPC empires allow us to join under them then this style of play could become more prevalent, but currently the systems in place for it are purely for self-RP and don't really work in a singleplayer environment, unless you really really really really like solo RP I guess
It would be cool if MP returns but that may not happen anytime soon given Haxus chose to prioritize NPC empires first
What even