It looks and plays well on my PC (I5 Sandybridge + Radeon HD6850).

Initial impression is that its very similar to GCII but upon zooming in, reminds me of SOASE. looks very good.

The planets revolving and moons orbiting look great and the icons etc are all pretty clear and familiar.( Its a little strange how ship/fleet icons don't orientate themselves to the direction of travel though.)

Played an initial run through as humans and thought the ai pretty agressive and impressive initially....partly I think my lack of familiarity though.

Balancing happyness and income takes a bit of thought , thats very good.

Started a second run through and hit what I think may be a bug :-

If you have enough money to pay for a ship outright and buy it, the game does not appear to be subtracting the money...(so they are effectively one turn free builds.) It took a while to notice this, it may be a mechanism but it seems incorrect. If I start a conventional ship build and then pay to finish it, money is subtracted normally.

I built a few ships like this without realising and this put me in the strongest position, thought may as well see what the ai does :-

It was aggressive as before but not that effective now against strong organised fleets. Certainly seems to use processing power anyhow as it frequently causes my processor fans to spool up.

Something that is required  is some kind of notification of when planetary invasions are happening or ship combat is initiated by the ai. I lost a planet because I didn't realise it had been taken. (I know this is subject to change later anyway, but even now its really necessary.)

I am guessing that there is fair amount to do with the planetary invasions ?. In GC2 I seem to remember there was more to it with combats taking multiple turns sometimes and a strength bar showing the combat. It needs a mechanism like that again . I do love the loading population into assaults ships mechanic, its really good.

Had one CTD when I tried to move a ship directly from selection in a spacestation directly into combat but the auto-save was very close so swiftly able to recover. Later moved the ship out to an empty hex first and then to combat and it played through fine so that may be a little bug to catch ?.

Its hard to gauge the ai and how good or bad it is with the money/one turn insta-build bug. I assume that is a bug and as a result I am probably in a fair bit stronger position than I should be. The ai was reasonable before that, but against organised fleets, it does not appear to be concentrating enough force really to viably challenge objectives. Its early I know and sure there will be a lot of work and changes in this area anyway.

Upgrade ships works well, but it gets quite repetitive to keep upgrading ships after a while, especially if one has a lot of them. Is there an auto-upgrade ships function anywhere ?. If not it would be a very useful option if playing through with the default designs.

Really like what you are doing with this (and loved the earlier titles.) This has the makings of an incredible game but the devil is in the details isn't it.

Cheers

Charlie