After having my willpower break down from some great word-of-mouth, I downloaded the game for the first time last night and put in a solid few hours. Really enjoyed my first stab at the game, and ended up staying up later than I should have on a work night. That's always a good sign for a game.

My thoughts after my initial run, and some features I would've liked to have had during that playthrough:

[*]Tutorial Navigation - After finishing a tutorial session, have the game return to the tutorial selection screen rather than the main menu

[*]Tech Tree Icon Shapes - The tech tree was a shock to the senses. I love having an expansive tree with many options, but it took me a long while to parse out what my different options were. What would be great is to have distinctive icon shapes for different types of upgrades. If I'm looking for ship prototypes, I look for square icons. If I'm looking for weapon upgrades, I look for triangle icons. Defensive upgrades, shield shaped icons, and so forth. This would be a huge help both for initially learning your way around the tree, and for quicker navigation after you've gotten the hang of the layout

[*]Link Between Construction Menu and Tech Tree - On a related note, it would be nice to have the construction UI have shortcuts to the tech tree. One of the first things I wanted to do was unlock various ships so I could try them out. As it is I had to look at a greyed out ship, remember the name, head over to the tech tree, and hunt icon by icon until I found the ship. It would be great if all I had to do was mouse over the greyed construction icon, click "find research path," and be brought to the tech tree with both the ship prototype highlighted and the prerequisite path lit up.

[*]Tech Tree Options Specific to Ship Type - Also on that train of thought, although the tech tree lists what ships are affected by each upgrade, it would be nice to select a ship from the main interface view, and click "show research options" and be brought to the tech tree with all research options related to that ship highlited.

[*]Multi-System Guard Orders for Ships - On the map I played, I set up a "front line" planet that had a chain of two other planets only accessible via that front line planet. To combat pirates or enemy scout ships that get past the front line to head to those two other planets, instead of having static defenses or forces on those two systems, or manually sending forces to chase after them from system to system, it would be great if I could just tell a group of frigates to guard all three planets. They would stay parked at the front line where I put them, but would continue to chase any enemies through to the other two systems. After combat, they would return to their initial spot at the front line.

[*]Mining Icon Spacing in Mid-Level Zoom - When zoomed in all the way, mining asteroids have no icons. If you zoom out a bit, icons appear for either metal or crystal. If you zoom out a bit more, the icons disappear again. The problem is, at that mid-level zoom which is the only place the mining icons appear, the mines, and thus the icons, are right on top of each other and nigh impossible to discern from one another. Since at that zoom level there's a lot of empty space around the planet, and little need to know the exact placement of the mines around the planet, I would propose that the mining icons appear nicely spaced to the side of the planet icon. This would make them readable, and provide the same information without interfering with any other UI information.

[*]More Complete Tool Tips - The pop-up tool tips that are there are great for a first time player, but as of now there's some key information on the main screen that does not have a pop-up. It looks like most of the buttons are covered, but some of the non-button information could use the pop-up treatment as well. I think it was the numbers at the bottom of the screen, just left of middle, that I wished I had an info box for. It didn't take long to make the connection and realize they were HP/Shields/Antimatter numbers, but anything that helps a new user just "pick up and play" is a good thing.

[*]Ship Movement in Battle - Purely an aesthetic thing, but it would be nice if the bigger ships moved around more during battle. As-is it seems like they plop themselves down for the fight, only moving if they need to get their weapons in range. For simple eye-candy reasons, it would be great if the frigates, cruisers, and capital ships were slowly moving around during the battle -- the way you'd expect to see in some kind of sci-fi movie.

[*]Placement of "Zoom to Mouse Cursor" Option - I had read that the game had the ability to zoom to where the mouse cursor was placed, and that was one of the first things I looked for in the game options. And kept looking. It wasn't until a while later that I found the toggle on the main UI. I'm not sure I see the toggle as so important it deserves its own button on the UI, but if it is needed there, how about having a toggle in the options menu to set what the default is for the "zoom to cursor" toggle. It just seems logical to have it grouped with the other control options for the game.

[*]Income Rates in Plain Sight - My memory is getting fuzzy now, but I seem to remember that you can only see your income rates for coin, metal, and crystals by mousing over your stockpile numbers. It would be great if you could set it to show the income rates on the main UI right there next to the stockpile amounts.

[*]Team Color Selection - Well, seems a bit anticlimactic to end on such a minor change request, but when choosing teams for a skirmish, it would be great if instead of clicking on my faction icon to change my team color, I could instead click to bring up a drop down menu of all the colors and simply click on the one I want.
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That's all I can think of for now, I'll save the general gushing about the game for another post. Suffice to say, I'm extremely impressed at first glance and am very much looking forward to another round with the game tonight!