I played GalCiv II and loved it.  I still go back a play twilight of arnor every now and then.  Just joined the beta and I am excited to play the next installment of the Galactic Civilization series.

The interface looks similar to GalCiv II, which is a good thing.  However some things are not intuitive or easily discovered.

Ship Designer

I absolutely loved this feature in GalCiv II.  This and watching my custom made starships battling it out kept my coming back to the game over the last decade.  While using the new designer in GalCiv III, I noticed some differences. 

Camera rotation, for instance, was elusive.  The middle mouse button is not as intuitive of an option as, say, the right mouse button.  Not all mice have a middle button (Laptop track pad for example)

Part Gizmos are still new to me, and often times I accidently mess up my design.  How about a CTRL+Z undo command?  This would make the learning curve less frustrating.

Something else that I noticed.  When placing a part on my ship, I still have the same type of part selected.  I would rather have the part that I just place be selected so that I can scale/rotation/animate seamlessly.   This would be better as a hot keyable option, holding the shift key lets  you keep placing the same part type on the ship. 

Planet Manager

I love the Adjacent Tile bonuses.  In GalCiv II, I loved placing building in aesthetically pleasing location.  Now my OCD nature is getting rewarded.  However, tile and building bonuses' effects are not easily understood.

Tool tips and dialog don't explain adjacent bonuses value and effect clearly enough.  It took me several games to figure out what they did.  Example: it is not clear if +2 wealth adds to my planet's base income or if the building gains the bonus.  After some experimenting the answer is obvious, but not before.

Improving tool tips to clarity what these bonuses and there affects do would be great.  Maybe a pop out help menu or legend would be an easier way to communicate these details

Shipyard View

The planet sponsor display box should be switched with the build queue.  It makes more sense to have the build queue in the same field of vision as the build options then to have it on the other side of the screen.

Galactic View

I take it that asteroids are not yet implemented?  Are there any cool plans for gas giant planets?  Mineable or colonizable moons?

Starbases still look like a work in progress, but I would like to make one suggestion.  It would be nice if there was some sort of notification that a constructor has arrived that the starbase.   It doesn't need to be as overt as GalCiv II's popup.  You could use the next turn notification to alert the player that a startbase is ready to be upgraded.

Speaking of the turn button.  I love this approach to the whole "something needs your attention" notification.  It is subtle, and noticeable.  I would like to make one suggestion.  There should be...

Edit.

... a second button that sets the ship or shipyard to stand by.  If I'm only going to set them to stand by anyway, there is no need to select or focus on the ship.