First off, I would like to say that I am definitely having fun, but as I am nearing the end of a medium galaxy game I have a bit of feedback to offer...

1) I saw a mention of a more robust trading system between players in the interview at IGN. I would love a way to be able to tell my computer ally, "hey, I need crystal" or to even be able to arrange a trade of my money for their crystal at prices both of us benefit from.

2) Star icons should match the background of the star systems, or at least there should be an indicator on the icon. In my head as I am keeping track of all the systems in the game, I at least have thought of them not by the color of the star, but by their backgrounds. So when I moved on to the third system, and was clicking around for my closest ship factory I was being thrown off.

3) Culture spread: Culture seems good in concept, but definitely needs some work. I know change is coming, hopefully will make more sense. The first planet you conquer in each system ought to be immune to cultural flipping. That way you can at least establish a beach head to push out culture from. Or maybe others cultures should shrink down as their broadcast towers are destroyed.

4) How about a 1 logistics point structure? At various points planets might have an odd number for a logistics cap. It would be nice if there was a structure that could be built for one point to fill this up.

5) Odd behavior: I had a cap ship travel the distance between two stars in normal space, not phase space. Trying to reissue it orders didn't seem to cause it to be able to jump, so I had to wait for it to reach the next star along its route from which it resumed normal behavior. Just took a long while to arrive.

6) Medium difficulty AI seems unable to plan / overcome defenses. I know I have insurgency researched and have trashed the enemy fleets, but when I build defenses, I build them in a way that groups defenses together in a supportive manner. Such as turrets surrounding repair modules and a phase inhibitor. This seems sufficient to defend and scare off all attacks by pirates and players. I ignored a player who had control of over half a system while I eliminated player C. Player B would repeatedly attack one of my border worlds, but never really did much to the defenses there beyond maybe blowing up a turret or two which were quickly rebuilt. I never had any defensive ships in the gravity well, but left to plenty of time and no threats from me, the computer was unable to overcome static defenses at all. And at the same time now that I have insurgency and am wiping out the last player, I notice all of their systems seem very poorly defended. Gauss platforms concentrated at the entrance point in the rear, securing against a planet they would have long ago taken for themselves. And at the same time insurgents are roaming the gravity well rather uninhibited. The AI needs to plan its defenses better and build fleets big enough to conquer static defenses it knows are present.

6a) Question I have for the devs and my fellow players, should pirates be a concern at all if the planets around the star have decent static defenses established? It seems to me that right now several gauss cannons, a repair station and 2 hangers are enough to never have to worry about a planets defense from pirates. Should they be a threat that warrants attention, or just a bit of preventive planning but never a look back?

7) Silly / oddly timed messages from computer allies. Messages like the "I'll hold em off till you send help" that are in reference to very secure planet their scout ship is passing through. I am not sure if those messages are prompted by raiders, but it always makes me feel silly to jump over and see there is no battle of import happening there.

8) Save Games. Right now auto saves seem to have an unnecessarily long name, and auto saves from games either overwrite or just get lost in a blur with one another. It would be great if each game could have some meta data in it to keep the load game screen more organized. Something like a game number for each game that is started and a subset for each play session within that game. So a sub folder for each time you start a game, and then a sub sub folder for each play session you load.

9) Planet sizes. I know game board changes are coming and "going to get much more exciting", but I wanted to toss this idea out there. What if each type of planet could come in different sizes. A large planet might allow an extra tier of upgrades or just support a greater population and fleet, and smaller than average planets would have a penalty. This could make certain prime real estate to fight over and create for more dynamic combat where players decide if they want to go for that large Terran planet that everyone else also wants, or focus on gobbling up the less desirable small ones.