initial thoughts on galciv III

•  the galaxy sizes beyond huge (gigantic/excessive/insane) are great sign.
•  I say this because I'm one of those players who enjoys the challenge of building at a sustainable stable pace & playing the long game where I get to enjoy maintaining that base while managing diplomatic/trade/militaristic bits & bobs with a significant number of other species but gigantic often felt a little cramped once you added in most of the other species. Hopefully galaxy size has a larger influence on aggressive tendencies towards neighbors during the slower expansion usually resulting in slower research speeds I normally set & larger galaxies
• interstellar rifts
•  with only "coming soon", the name makes me feel like worm holes, which is phenomenal for many reasons. While those larger galaxies are great, they also have a drawback in that allies are less like allies than some guy way the hell over there when it takes dozens of turns just to reach them. Interstellar rifts have the potential to make allies more random, varied, & solid than who is next door if my assumption is correct.
•  research speed
•  I mentioned above that I typically crank the research speed down & galaxy size up on galcivII, but playing the galciv3 alpha I'm starting to notice a lot of research items that unlock multiple benefits (i.e. multiple buildings/components/benefits/etc) I'm starting to wonder if there might be a better way than just saying research takes x% longer. Specifically a two part change might work really well as a result:
• 1: make some of them fork out into a subtree pathways where you can research the individual bits resulting in x% more research needed anyways when you combine both & minor perks coming behind the brass ring itself... or perhaps even more to really expand out the tech tree in long games without really even doing much since a couple % here and there to this & that really adds up over time.
• 2: set these newly created fork points to be untradable, but allow the end result to be tradable for the brass ring itself. Make the extra perks require having both the brass ring -and- the fork point in order to research them.
• Technologically this makes sense, showing a group of people how to make something, but not the why's behind why it's made that way or why it works makes it very difficult to improve on the original design they were given. As the end result, it would be possible to do things like give away an older tech without giving another race a lg up on the tech tree itself
• playing with a huge galaxy felt cramped, but (as stated) I normally played calcivII on gigantic & that could be why
• Basic factory
• It seems like basic factory is always available with more productive (and expensive) factories an upgrade(s?) away.  This is a vast improvement over galcivII where colonizing new planets became painful after a certain point unless you flat out purchased a high end factory or two.  In short, "OMG THANKS!!!!12121"
• I seem to be incapable of making a mining station, looking over the forum seems to suggest that this is intentional & temporary pending real changes while others report them working.  If they are working, I'm missing something fundamental.
• Orbital shipyards
• These are a great improvement.  Being able to (slooowly) move shipyards around is pretty cool as a potential tactical option.  Being able to support them with multiple planets is likewise pretty neat with the option to divert extra resources to them when speed is of the essence or simply to avoid having a ship be likely obsolete by the time it finishes being built at a less industrial planet galciv2 style.  being able to pool several smaller planets rather than having a handful of massively industrial planets capable of churning out a useful ship(s) half a galaxy away from the action at a useful pace is great.
• life support ranges I'm not sure why I don't remember it being an issue in galcivII, but I noticed it a couple times where I had nonconnecting islands of traversable space between colonized worlds for some of my ships (warships especially).  It would be great if you could cheat a bit by locking in a one way trip to  friendly planet  for a resupply similar to how taking a wormhole can result in a survey ship across the galaxy taking a locked straight path back to your space. Something like this could also allow the odd midgame colonization of previously inhospitable high G/ration/etc worlds that happen to be in another race's territory making for some interesting & more complicatedmutual defense /alliance possibilities
• economic stimulus/cultural festival/etc are pretty cool additions to the planetary build queues that allow for neat flexability that doesn't involve knocking down buildings & making new ones