Just like to say I was a huge fan of the previous Galciv games. I held off initially because I couldn't see much in terms of faction customization, but now it's been introduced, I'm thoroughly impressed.

Now for the feedback:

POSITIVES:

• This version has much greater performance than the previous patch, keep up the good work at keeping things running smoothly without compromising on the AI behaviour.
• Overall I like the new direction the game has taken over GalCiv 2. It's a lot more streamlined but still as complex as the previous games.

NEGATIVES:

• Whilst playing on normal, I've found that most races seem to be using up all of their credits super early. On a Gigantic map, by the time I meet any races, they are averaging around 100BC. In turn this means that most races are incredibly ahead of the curve in terms of technology. Is this an intended design for normal mode? I'd have figured with a higher difficulty that this would be the case, but even the Iridium who value wealth over other priorities have hardly any cash left by the time I get to them. Is there anyway of changing the AI behaviour to reflect the goals and needs of each race as defined by their personalities? (ie Iridium will hoard credits and trade more often, Thalan don't value wealth as much so will pour money into Tech research and Military ships.)

BUGS:

Some bugs found in the latest patch.

• The graphics across all the UI for planets that have been colonized disappear if you reload a game once you've exited Galciv3.
• If I keep restarting the game in order to have an ideal homeworld set-up, I find that after the third or fourth time of quitting and restarting, the map will no longer show and appear blank. If I try to do this one more time, I generally crash to desktop not long after
• Still finding that the game is still running after I've quit.
• I find occasionally in the custom race ship designer that the ships will not appear on the screen.

OBSERVATIONS:

Just a few questions on some things I've seen.

• Will there be a ship designer on the main menu? I noticed it has disappeared with the latest update and I was curious to know if this will still be in the final version.
• Has been mentioned already but pirates found in anomalies now have a combined Kinetic weapon total of 72, which is huge for early game.
• The new Pirate bases have no profile if you talk to them, and generally seem a bit buggy with trade and diplomacy - obviously not logged as a bug as these have only just been implemented. Will you be able to talk to pirates in the future, and if so how will the trade screen work?
• I noticed in the 'FactionDefs' file that some races have the trait 'Merciless', which is not selectable when designing your own custom factions, any idea why or why it can't be implemented in?

REQUESTS:

Most of these are really minor things that are mostly for polish, but I'm also using an old rig, so some of them I wouldn't mind seeing being implemented.

• Is there any chance of allowing key binds to zoom in and out of the map? They could be tied to '+' ad '-' keys. My current work around is using xpadder to assign the mousewheel to two buttons on the gamepad.
• With race customization, is there anyway of allowing a scroll wheel on the 'traits' section of the faction profile? This way we're not restricted to 7 traits before the menu looks kinda weird.
• Are we able to have a basic 'tech tree' designer like we did with TOTA, or will we have to look at the code for now?

So far it's really coming along. I'm hoping that when we get to 1.0 everything is polished and works as it should.