Lol, I thought I removed the dog, I've been testing for the last week or two without the dog roaming. We have a new android character we thought could clean up after the dog, haha. Good to hear your thoughts though and while I thought it was fun to let them pile up forever, maybe a max of 50 or so would be smart. We also thought/planned/whatever to allow you to "equip" the dog to a character, thus why it follows them around. The dog I think also needs to move around more randomly, and maybe needs a kennel
Free roam XP and Skill Levels are different, assuming we keep them as different game modes with different functionality. Skill Levels are manual where you get skill points as reward when you complete a mission or win a battle. XP levels are no longer a "thing" because kits/skills are equipped instead of earned, and skill level is no longer gained by XP. I suppose the titles are still there (ensign, jr officer, captain, etc) so we probably need to re-enable some concept of XP. It's also possible we'll never have an actual 2nd mode, and will just add free roam features slowly into the main game mode. It's a constant or continual discussion.
The zoom scale we'll prob leave for now, but we may look at restricting it even further for away teams (only 2 levels) and on ship maybe remove that most scaled that you screenshot, though that may also be just a resolution bug where high resolutions are being allowed to zoom to much since it is a factor of res.
I noticed strange unequip and re-equip on changing assignment from bridge to engine and back. I'll have to look at that system and make sure it's defined well when and why a kit is unequipped and why it doesn't stay with on away teams (again I was testing with flamethrower equipped and it seemed to always stay equipped onto away mission).
The joys of programming!
Thanks.