Greetings to all,

first off, thank you for bringing us the next game in one of the best 4X series I've ever played.

So far I've played about 10 PvE skirmishes, with varying number of opponents. The experience has been good, although the AI was not challenging at all. The game did not cause any technical issues, except in my first game against 4 AI, where it just crashed to desktop immediately upon loading the map, but I haven't encountered this issue again. I've left the game running idle for 3-4 hours (by accident), but when I came back it was still fine, with no interface lag and no memory bleed, so it seems pretty stable so far.

I've encountered a UI issue, where the Ideology panel will be very twitchy. What I mean is, the Unlock button will gray out or light up randomly, upon clicking anywhere on the tab, and regardless of pre-requisite conditions being fulfilled to unlock something or not. Most of the time, it doesn't work at all, and I have to double click the respective Ideology icon to use up points gathered, where the game will unlock randomly something out of that Ideology's tree. I don't know whether this is an issue as well, or it's intended, but I can't view a tree at all if I haven't unlocked something on it, the view just stays on the Pragmatic tree.

Also, another thing that might be an issue or a gameplay design decision, is that planets don't have the same number of build boxes as their class states. I've found a couple that had more, but most have less. Particularly the starting planet will usually by 8-9 build boxes, whereas it's a Class 10 planet. If this is not a technical issue, and this is the way planets are intended to work now, I have to say that I don't like it at all. Particularly, because you might not be able to always pull off synergy with neighboring buildings, so you are really left to the mercy of the RNG gods in how the build boxes will be arranged on each planet.

This is as far as what I perceive as technical issues goes.

So, my general suggestions, which may sound a bit dumb in some cases, but it's just my personal opinion on what I'd feel would be nice to have:

1) If the aforementioned problem with planets not having as many build boxes as their class number suggests is not an issue, then I'd you increase the standard overall planet quality.

2) Add satellites to the game. What I mean is, each planet to be allowed to have a certain number of satellites in orbit that can boost other buildings on the planet surface. For example, orbiting research facilities, for deep-space observation and zero-g experiments, or orbital missile arrays, or repair bots that can assist with ship repairs and resupply. The satellites don't have to give a huge boost, and each planet can only contain a limited amount in orbit, but they would add a nice flavor to the game in my opinion. It'd also make colonizing smaller planets a bit more viable, since you can build a few boosting satellites in orbit to compliment the low number of surface buildings to some degree. So in essence, they would act as very primitive starbases, without all the add-ons, smaller and cheaper, but also less functional.

3) Allow for ships to dock at starbases and be resupplied. In other words, starbases can assist in repairing ships at a faster rate, and if you have a bunch of transports, you could theoretically resupply their numbers, if you leave them at a starbase for a while, as reinforcements would be coming in.

4) Instead of simple transports for planetary invasions, allow us to create space infantry regiments, that will also be able to perform boarding actions on enemy ships and starbases. In other words, they'd be a permanent transport, dedicated only for military actions. However, they'd need time to be replenished with reinforcements, and I'd suggest, during reinforcement they also cost more upkeep.

5) I feel that space pirates should be a bit more common. They could even act as minor races, spontaneously forming in the planets of races with low approval rating. They wouldn't take over the planet, but they would act in a wide radius around that planet. It could be combined with a crimes rating and subversive action by enemy races, hiring the pirates to harass you.

6) I guess the research UI is in a very early design phase, but I'd like something similar to the GalCiv2 research screen, rather than 4 different tabs and not being able to see what kind of research comes next and what that research does exactly.

7) When creating a new colony, allow us to build the colony capital where we want it. More often than not, it ends up being built at the worst possible tile, sometimes taking up a really good bonus too and/or in a position where you can't utilize any synergy with neighbouring tiles.

8) I've observed that certain anomalies influence your ideology points. This is fine, but when you have a survey ship on auto-survey, more often than not it will end up picking the anomaly you didn't want (In a benevolent game, I got something like 40-50 points of malevolence just for that. It's a neat idea, but you could change it so that it doesn't force down on you ideology points you don't want. Instead, give us the option of choosing, so whenever an anomaly like this is encountered, an event with the 3 ideology options happens, and the player chooses a course of action. It's particularly bad to get malevolence points, just because a lazy crewman didn't handle an artifact properly. Compared to flooding whole planets for the sake of digging out an old ship, or attaching face-huggers on your colonists because it'll make them smarter, an unfortunate accident shouldn't add 50% more malevolent points than the malevolent decisions for those events.

9) Make smaller planet colonization more feasible. Allow us to turn uninhabitable planets to simple facilities. For example, research stations, small starport bases, military installations, or space mining operations. So the planet is not habitable, but a few dozen workers with environmental suits or inside protected installations, could still be productive and keep the planet for you. You could even set up long-term slow terraforming operations.

10) This ties in with the above: A lot of times, the AI will just produce a gazillion colony ships and colonize EVERYTHING. Whatever can be colonized will be colonized. This ends up destroying the AI, because the smaller colonies can't support themselves and just mooch off their income until the AI dies horribly, because it can't produce any defence. Please make it, so that the AI can keep in mind that colonization just for the sake of colonization is not a viable solution.

11) Allow us to propose resolutions to the United Planets. Each nation proposes a resolution, and it gets voted on by the others. Also, minor races should be a part of the United Planets, perhaps voting together as a united consortium.

12) Allow ships and fleets to be put on patrol mode, which would act like the Sentry mode, just not stationary.

13) More tooltips and explanations are needed, particularly for some of the newer stuff, like the Ideology trees. perhaps include an in-game encyclopedia that explains everything on how the game works etc.

That's all I can think of right now. In general, I like where you are going with this game, and what I've said above is just minor thoughts I have on it.

Thank you for this opportunity.