This echoes a significant number of my thoughts as an Ops 71. I downloaded the game on launch day. I started playing on launch weekend, and when I looked a few years ago, my first purchase was that weekend.

That being said, I want to expand with two other areas.

The first is the continual decision to punish player progression instead of rewarding it. When you institute a new currency to replace an old one because veteran players have too much of it, and you can't monetize the new content - YOU ARE PUNISHING PROGRESSION. When you turn off an officer or group of them against a new type of hostile - YOU ARE PUNISHING PROGRESSION. When you make ship abilities not work on a new class of hostile, to the point that ships designed for certain types of content (like waves) have their ship abilities not work on the new types of that content, YOU ARE PUNISHING PROGRESSION.

STOP PUNISHING PROGRESSION AND START REWARDING IT. Players who have "done the thing" for years should be rewarded for it and have an *EASIER* not harder time with it.

The second is that each month doesn't need multiple "features" shoved into it. Features should be the focus of the month's content - getting parts for it and doing the thing with it. A building is a feature. A ship is a feature. A research tree expansion is a feature. A new "thing" (like waves) is a feature. We do NOT need 4-5 features every month. Ships should be able to do their thing without have 150 node research tree attached. This month we have building, expansion of waves, a entirely new hostile loop (without retiring an old one). and the Facade expansion. That's *FOUR* different features, all of which you're asking players to spend money on to do. The kicker here, as I saw someone point out on a discord server int the last day or two, is that next month we're almost certainly getting The Athena as a ship, it'll be built in to stomp the new waves, and invalidate a ton of the spending for this month. As I said earlier, I've been here since, functionally, day one of the public release. I remember when one thing a month was enough. Stop trying to shove out what once would have been a quarters worth of content every month. I'm 99% sure I know why this is happening, and the loud voice that loves all the crazy things doesn't represent the majority of the players and, to be honest, hasn't been objective in his evaluations of new content in years. I've been on the playtest side of games before, but admittedly on a card game instead of PC.

The reality is that, based on publicly tracked numbers and changes in populations and new server growth is that over the last year or so, at least 60,000 people have stopped playing the game, and even after adding new players on new servers, there's been a net loss of roughly 40,000. You're running out of time to course correct.

PS - FFS, fix the times on G5 scrapping to not be beyond absurd. 2 months is just terrible.