I don't post often but I lurk quite a bit. Love the game to bits though. Some helpful suggestions for the remaining 159:09:25 left:

- It really bugs me that phase lanes overlap sometimes. I've had a pixel-perfect-match where a warp lane goes right overtop of another, through a planet, and beyond it. Imagine my confusion when I couldn't get my ships to take the "shorter" route!

- Phase lanes criss-crossing seems kind of strange to me as well. It adds a bit of randomness and variety, and if that is intentional then fine; but speaking as a coder, finding optimal placement for planets and still keeping it random is fairly easy to do.

- AI area for improvement: Gravity-well placement for ships. I "gamed" the AI a bit when he took control of one of my systems early in the game. Here's the situation:

He sent in 30 lights and a capital ship. Capital ship fell in battle, but I had to retreat in face of the other 30. Since the lights couldn't attack my planet, once the system was clear they retreated back to their entry point in the gravity well and just sat there. Having the planet still allowed me to observe, and I built up a counter-attack force on the outside. Before I was ready, in phased a new capital ship! It approached my planet and started slowly bombarding it.

How I gamed the system: I warped in my force of 20 LRMs, and instructed them to attack the capital ship. After losing just 3 or 4 LRMs, the capital ship blew just as the 30 lights joined the attack. I'd then retreat. I'd repeat this process over and over and over again; I even left the system as "bait" for capital ships and didn't bother winning it back. Each time the 30 lights would retreat to the far end of the system where they couldn't help defend the capital ship. It was a huge economical victory for me.

Suggestion: Have the AI move fleets as a fleet. When ships aren't doing anything, they should stick with the ships that ARE doing something, in case a sneak attack shows up.

- More AI combat improvement: 30 LRMs can't defeat 30 Lights in a toe-to-toe, un-upgraded battle; but I think it should be a bit more like 50/50. The problem is the reload time for LRMs is higher, and the default focus-firing the AI chooses to employ does a lot of overkill.

Entering the battle, all 30 LRMs will launch ALL of their missiles at a single Light, even though half the missles would probably do the job. At the same time, each of the lights focus-fires on one LRM and kills it. One can assume that in each firing cycle, one ship will die from each side (until the numbers start getting down to the 16-15-14 range). But the lights fire more frequently, thusly mowing down the LRMs with ease.

This may be a desired paper-rock-scissors balance to the game, but it is frustrating because if I manually click on each ship and tell it to fight differently, the battle would sway more to my side (killing 2 ships each volley for the LRMs instead of 1). But the battle is happening so quickly, micro-ing the battle is very difficult.

Suggestion: Have the AI "smart-fire." Know how much damage is currently being launched at the ships and only fire if it is less than or equal to a kill; otherwise, select a new target.

- Gameplay, even in a large universe, seems to almost be set up in a tournament-tree style. You as a player typically defeat opponent after opponent, one-by-one, and one of the AI players is doing the same. It's like a best of 9 tournament, where the first round winners become beheamoths and fight each other, who then go on to the final two for the big showdown. Was this play style intentional?

What I'd like to see is one star, with 20-50 planets all inter-connected. You'd get a lot of back-and-forth fighting, more backstabbing, and less dealing with securing those choke points (inter-steller phase lanes). I think it would make for a more dynamic game and at the same time get rid of those forum complainers who say the game ends in stalemate.

To clarify my concern: near end game in a large universe, you'll typically end up with 2 huge factions each connected by ONE choke point (an interstellar phase lane). The only tactic for the game now is to throw as many ships as you can and hope to break through; the first person to break through is probably the winner.

If there were several backdoors or other attack routes, each player would have to spread out his defenses and the "breakthrough" point would be a suprise (and there are more options for counter-attack as well).