My notes on Alpha 3

I have been playing around for several hours now.  First off, I have found no bugs.  Still an impressive accomplishment.  I tried to be good and
take notes. They are informal. Please note that any snark in the comments is just how I talk with people I trust not to take me serious.  Overall
I am so impressed with the state of things that listing all the stuff I like would become gushing fanboi mush. This is good stuff.

In any previous testing I have done, they just had me give impressions, etc, with attempting continuity or context.  Doing all this gave me
flashbacks to sitting in a little Silicon Valley room with two way mirrors and recording equipment, babbling on about somebody's flashy new
printer driver.  That was full on geek wierd.



“Constuctor M1”?  "Constuctor M3"?

Is there supposed to be a build list for a Starport?  Just one entry at a time seems clumsy for large empire/fleet construction management.

There are lists for colonies, ships, resources, etc.  Shouldn't there be one for Starports?

When I get to a star, should I be able to hover over that star and see stats about it such as habitable planets, etc?  Should I at least see
a star name?

I am positive I saw in the dev stream that you could move the camera to the galactic ecliptic and below.  I can't seem to do that.

I pushed Quick Start.  I got a game with Altaria.  I got a big map I am not used to.  Is there any way to display the size and other
characteristics of my present galaxy?  On further thought, is this the way this is supposed to be on Quick Start?  Am I expected to discover
and recognize the key characteristics?

I still have a semantic disconnect with “Starport” and “Shipyard”.  
A Starport is something commercial and passenger space ships use, equivalent to a present day airport.  That thing floating by my planet is a
“Shipyard”, maybe a “Space Yard”.  Someone else said it, but the obvious choice is “Stardock”.   
The designer toy/playground presently called “Shipyard” is a marine architect's fantasy in 3D.  “Space Architect's Office” is too long for a
label, however appropriate.  “Ship Maker” comes to mind as simplest and shortest and might look good in the Main Menu.  

Unfortunate Genus in Survey Report
One Wormhole To Many in Survey Report

I look at the tech tree and see Large Scale Construction.  Great.  I look for Medium Scale Construction.  No good.  It is hidden under
Zero G Construction.  What associates Zero G with Medium size?  I find Small hidden similarly.  I think I follow some of the labeling logic, but it
didn't work for me.

I cannot find anything that fully explains the Starport manufacturing levels and distance effects.  I saw something popup or hover when I was
setting up a remote source, but cannot find it while things are up and running.  By the way, I am still unsure about the sharing of
manufacturing between different planets and a Starport, but it does seem to have interesting potential.

Is there any keystroke that gets me from Starport to Starport as I am looking at my overall fleet manufacturing?  Same thing goes for the
planet list now that I look for it.  Left and right arrows, please?

I had a planet sending production to a remote Starport while I built one locally. (I consider this my first possibly clever play idea in GC3.) I
opened up the new Starport and wanted to grab the local production away from the previously assigned Starport.  I couldn't.  I had to go to
the other Starport, open it up, remove the appropriate planet from the list, close that, go back to the new Starport, open it up, and then add
the local planet to the list.  Somewhere in there, I got nagged about leaving a Starport without resources.  I muttered angrily “I'm working on
it.”  The UI isn't supposed to make me mutter angrily; the AI is supposed to do that.

I hit ctrl-s to quick save and answer the work phone.  I see no visual confirmation a quick save happened.  I hit ctrl-s again just in case.  
Sometimes I do that three or four times.  Some of that is me.  Some of that is the complete lack of even a momentary hiccup in the
graphics during disc work.  (nice) Some of that is a lack of friendly message.  Please add the friendly message part.