Hey everyone – this is my first post for the beta 2 testing, and I have to say that SOASE is going to be one unbelievable game! I jotted down a couple of notes from my first game, just a couple suggestions and some minor bugs I found:

Bugs:

1)After successfully thwarting off attacks by pirates or CPU opponents, I found that about a quarter of the time if I went to manually move my remaining ships into custom position in the gravity well, that some ships would attempt to make a jump to a random planet in my empire. This happened maybe 10 times over the course of my game
2) I noticed that during a fight at a Dead Asteroid - that lasers, autocannons and missiles were missing their animations (they weren’t there at all, just completely invisible, but the sounds were still there) during a battle, but battle damage was definitely occurring. Moments later at my home planet during a pirate attack all weapon "animations" were back to normal, and after I moved my original fleet out of the Dead Asteroid battle, their weapon animations returned to normal as well, even when I sent them back to the Dead Asteroid to test the bug out again. I was unable to repeat this bug.
3) I noticed later in the game, once I colonized planet, and started to set up shop (metal mines, hanger defense, gauss emplacements), that the construction ship would attempt to build a metal or crystal mine and it would start constructing normally, and then just freeze its construction. I found this for structures at around 35-40% complete, and 65-70% complete. I had to manually scuttle the un-built mine in order for further construction of other orbital items to complete. I was able to repeat this a couple of times (maybe three or four times).

Suggestions:
1)When a capital ship gains a level, it would be nice for an icon to appear maybe on the right hand side of the screen so you can easily click and pick new abilities without searching for the specific ship in your empire…once you have about 8-12 ships its hard remembering where they all are!
2)It would be nice to be able to manually set (at a hanger defense) the attack priority for fighters/bombers (the only reason I say this is because it would be nice to have one set of hanger’s bombers directly attack pirate pillagers, and have the other three hanger’s bombers attack other non-planet bombardment pirate ships)
3)It would also be nice to have a listing in the empire view of all ships currently in phase jump – I lost some ships this way when they weren’t grouped or when I wasn’t following them directly – although the empire view helped me find them, it would just be nice to see who was going where to keep track of everything (but maybe not trade ships, that would get too hectic)
4)After losing a planet or two to enemy CPUs, I found myself in a situation where I didn’t have any colony ships on hand, my battleship that had the colonization ability hadn’t been researched yet, and my ship count was something like 376/313. I needed to scuttle a whole bunch of ships just to get my ship count down to an amount so I was able to build a new colony ship. I found this to be kind of a pain, how have other people managed this (other than making sure that the battleship that has the colonize was researched prior to this type of situation!)
5)The trade ships and the ships that are auto-built when you build the "foundry" ( I know that’s not the right name of the orbital structure that enhances mines) added a really cool level to the game – protecting them really felt like you were protecting your mobile empire other than just static planets, and ideas for adding other ships that would go about their business that require your fleet’s protection would add even more. Maybe something like leisure vessels or "cruise" boats. Just some ideas. Tourism could be a great addition for credit increases at specific destination planets
6)It would also be great to add some sort of privateer orbital structure which creates ships around your planet that assist in planet defense, maybe a couple of different types of privateer ships would be good (a couple of frigates and maybe a small cruiser or sorts). Once you start expanding your empire, its really hard to defend all of your planets…the citizens of each planet should take up arms (frigates) to defend themselves!
7)Not to complicate things, but maybe another couple different types of planets with unique attributes, but only if that worked well with the overall design of the game.
8)Once more quick thing – maybe some other types of orbital gun emplacements (maybe laser or missile ones as well? Or maybe even orbital targeting assistance platforms…
9)One more: maybe mini-veterancy for frigates and cruisers…small bonuses to armor, shields, repair, speed or damage output?
10)I promise this will be last one (for today): an orbital structure that slows down approaching enemy fleets in phase space (to buy you some time to ready your defenses and call in reinforcements from adjacent planets)

Just some ideas I had, I love reading everyone’s input for the beta, its going to really help make this game amazing (even though it already is!). Regardless, this game is awesome, keep up the good work guys!

Any comments are more than welcomed