Feedback on the Feedback
GalCiv3 Forums
I've enjoyed seeing these feedback documents to your team, giving us a small glimpse into your process. If you'll humor me a moment, I'd like to make a comment or two.
Xeno Farming
I would actually prefer to see a more sciencey term than "farming." I would suggest Xeno Horticulture or Xeno Agriculture (horticulture has more to do with plants where as agriculture has to do with all of farming including animal husbandry). Another term that sounds cool in my mind, though I'm not sure why (I often get into arguments with my own head) is Xeno Harvesting.
Merciless vs Malevolent
Since you'd said, "I'm curious to hear what the alpha testers think," I'm going to allow ("if by 'allow' you mean 'force'") you to know what I think. 
I've spent a grueling thirty minutes trying to come up with something better and have arrived at the point that I prefer malevolent. In terms of the mechanic of the moral choice, might I suggest a fourth option? The existing options could be characterized as "Prevent, Suggest, and Require." Between prevent and suggest is an "Allow" state. Using the example shown in your feedback document, the allow option could say something like:
Allow any citizen wishing improved cognitive ability use while establishing regulations to prevent abuse
+10 Self Deterministic, +5% Research, +2% Economy
"Self Deterministic" might be called "Democratic" or "Libertarian" though I wanted to avoid those terms since they have a political flavor in the common parlance. The increase in economy is from the Podbucks opening up on every street corner selling pods with a scone (or late night commercials for Podagra that warn you to consult a physician if your intelligence has been elevated for more than four hours).
UI Scaling
Would it be feasible to make the primary UI (the lines and glows) be vector-based (e.g. SVG) with mipmaps for the icons and graphics?
Economy Screen
You might look at creating three circles (toruses) that turn around a common center when moving the control point. Picture a gyroscope, or the machine from Contact, but controlled from the red dot. The three circles would intersect at the slider position.
Another alternative might be to turn triangular shape into a tetrahedron (d4) that rotates to have one point touching the red dot and each visible face could be colored based on the angle of its normal to the screen. You could also include an Easter Egg that makes the d4 display a fortune cookie message if you spin it really fast (like a Magic 8 Ball without infringing on Mattel's patent).
