So I discovered Affinity Designer while looking for an alternative to Inkscape, and I after looking into it for all of two mins, I threw money at it and had it downloading. It is a great piece of software for sure but the vector tools leave a few things to be desired. I know quite a few of these things have been suggested before but I feel compelled to throw these out again because as of right now, it is looking like I am going to have to continue to use Inkscape to do the bulk of my designs until a few things with AD get sorted out.
1. Retaining Geometry when deleting nodes and simplify function
2. Select all nodes on the same sub paths via button/shortcut
3. Node alignment for horizontal and vertical orientations
With that being said, I am still happy I bought the software and I can wait to see where they take it.