First impressions. Please disregard anything that is an Alpha issue. I played on a three monitor setup with Steam on one screen, MS Word on another screen (to type comments as I encountered stuff), and the game on my center screen. Even with this, the game did not crash or glitch during gameplay. Very stable so far. One minor graphics issue (see below). (Note: I have an NVIDIA GTX 760 graphics card and Windows 7.)

I am still in early game. I have 5 colonized planets (about to be 6) and my first “Bomber” warships with about 70% of the map explored.

- Any plans for 3-monitor support?

- Cursor remains visible during opening cinematic (intended?). (BTW, I can mouse across all 3 screens.)

- Options Screen: What is UI Size supposed to change? I couldn’t adjust this. Not sure I would want to.

- Played on small map as Terrans with all 3 other races

• (Will planets be terraformable?)

- As others have said, the graphics are really nice. Text is easy to read, too.

- Planet Screen:

• Will planets be limited to the current number of hexes (43)? (The reason I’m asking this is for mod purposes later on.)

• I REALLY like the terrain modifiers, although I’m not sure how Antarctica rates “Prairie.”

• The new system of “globe” versus “sliders” is nice; not a big change, really. However, I love the idea of setting individual planet production using this system as opposed to the old system of specialization. Will this setting have any impact on population growth?

• I’m curious how you will implement Planetary Governors.

• I didn’t see morale anywhere. Later add on?

• At first I wasn’t sure how to place improvements. If I clicked on an improvement, then clicked once on a hex, the improvement would follow whatever hex I clicked on. It was easy to figure out that it was a double click.

• I can no longer build improvements and ships at the same time?

• I like that I can Drag and Drop an improvement in the construction queue.

• I would like “double click” to eliminate something in the construction queue.

- Ship menu on main screen

• Could you use “Skip” instead of “Pass”?

- Main display

• I am seeing some pixilation on the main screen in the gray background.

• Will the menu bar on the right-hand side of the screen be closable? (Note: I like this better than the system in GC2.)

• “Quick Build” is misleading. Call it simply “Build”?

  • I received no indication that I was successfully queuing a Colony Ship when I clicked “Build.”

• When my survey ship finds lost ships, there is no “snap to” the location. I am manually moving the map to activate the new ship. Possible I’m missing something here that would snap to the new ship. (Oh, never mind. Found the “Idle Ship” message.)

• Took me a minute to figure out the Ideology option the first time it popped up.

• Also took me a minute to understand the “Eject Ship” option. However, I love that colony ships take planetary population now. Given the link between population and economy, that will make early colonization more interesting to balance.

• When I “Quick Build” “Buy” a ship, there’s nothing indicating that I’ve bought it. Also, my total treasury amount is not visible when the “Quick Build” menu is up.

• When I get a new design, how do I upgrade ships?

More impressions at 20 planets colonized by me, 100% of map explored and colonized (except for an ocean world that no players seem to be able to colonize).

- Planet Screen:

• The music when I open the screen is louder than the background music in the main screen. My preference would be to have the music remain the same volume. (same for Starbase screen.)

• I will assume post-alpha 1 that it won’t be necessary to destroy an existing improvement when a better one is available.

• A “Ghost” planet is just a black planet screen? Or is this a bug?

- Main display

• The Scouts set to “Explore” are having the same problem in GC 3 that they had in GC 2: they seem to all go for the same spots on the map. “Explore” would be a lot more useful if the scouts would explore different parts of the map.

• Ships built at colonies do not appear as “Idle.” An “Auto-Eject” (like GC2) would help with knowing when a ship is completed. Also, when a ship is ejected, it would help if it was automatically selected for command purposes.

• When I click on the Mini-map, the main screen moves above where I click (by a lot). I have to drag the map to where I want to look.

• Sometimes clicking on planets or menu buttons doesn’t work first time. Could just be me or my computer.

- Starbases:

• Initially, I’m having a tough time figuring out how starbases work this time around. I assume that when the tech tree is available I’ll know which improvements increase a starbase’s available modules.

- Ideology:

• In GC2, I did not always pick one strategy. I often balanced my event choices around a generally neutral ideology (some good, some evil, some in the middle). Making the same choice every time where ideology points are concerned would get boring (for me).

• The ideology tree is not linear (one tier leading to another). I was able to unlock a “tech” twice (entertainment Industry). Not sure if this is how the tree is planned.

Yet more impressions after combat and invasion.

- Planet Screen:

• When the option “All” is selected in the “Available Projects” menu, and I select “Planetary Defense System,” the colony ship image pops up and blocks most of the screen. Annoying, especially if I want to queue more improvements.

- Main display

• There’s something strange going on with an oceanic world. I could not colonize it. The Altarian Resistance did. However, there is a fleet of Altarian colony ships just sitting in the hex next to the planet. First it was only 1 ship, now it’s 4, just sitting there. (Okay, never mind. The fleet finally moved and colonized a world I had missed. Having 4 colony ships gives the planet a starting population of 10b? Clever. Or maybe not. I could not replicate this by using a Colony ship to transfer population from one planet to another.)

• I’m assuming a later build will have the ability to select which hex a ship ejects into from a planet.

• Fleet pathing seems a bit off. I destroyed an enemy fleet and then selected a planet behind it. Instead of moving through the now vacant hex, my fleet went around it. Wait, even though the hex looked empty, there was apparently a whole bunch of individual ships there that only appear when I select the hex for movement. I seem to have unlimited attacks on these ships (not using up movement points) and destroyed over 15 individual ships to the loss of 1 of mine. I think someone else on the forum mentioned this bug.

• Fleet Bug: I had 3 Rangers and 3 Transports in a single hex. I clicked to create one fleet of Rangers and one of Transports. When I did this, the Stacked Ships displayed 2 fleets of 3 ships and 1 Ranger. When I clicked on the Ranger to add it to the Ranger Fleet, it disappeared.

• It would help to see fleet composition in Stacked Ships without having to click “Manager”.

• There is no "Pass" option for stacked fleets that I could find. Clicking "Pass" for one fleet/ship does not cause the game to cycle to the next idle ship/fleet.

• Invasion worked without any hitch.

- Starbases:

• I must admit that I like and dislike the starbase spacing requirement. I like it because it’s more realistic than the 4-starbase-per-sector rule from GC 2. I dislike it because it removes the strategy of bunching starbases that was very useful in GC 2 (lol). (Vote in favor of the new system.)

• I am getting the hang of starbase modules finally (guess I’m just slow). Seems overly complicated compared to GC 2 (too many clicks).

• I do have a question on starbases: will the 4-hex exclusion zone apply to other player starbases as well? For instance, if I place an "influence" starbase in another player's star system, does that prevent them from establishing their own starbase in that system (within the exclusion zone)?

- AI Fleets:

• Since the combat mechanic is not part of the Alpha, I won’t talk about that here. However, after attacking and destroying several Drengin fleets, new Drengin fleets appear and just sit there next to the planet that built them, despite the fact that I have unarmed scouts sitting near the Drengin planets spying on them. I can simply move one battle fleet from planet to planet and destroy Drengin fleets at will.

I continued to end game but found no other issues that haven't already been addressed.

For me, the game never crashed or glitched--very stable.