First off, this game is more than what I even expected, especially for a Beta release. Its really enjoyable to sit down and spend hours conquering an entire galaxy.

Now of course, heres whats annoying me:
1. The sound, the ships look too similar when zoomed out, and the AI is a little dumb (sending one little scout frigate against 30+ capital ships...)

2. It runs VERY weird on my system. People say it runs perfectly smooth with it on high resolutions and such, but mine chugs a LOT. What I mean by chugs is that it'll appear to run smoothly but it'll pause for a split second every few seconds and when I zoom in on medium sized battle it'll get really low FPS!

Here's my specs-
CPU: Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.40 (no OC)
RAM: DDR2-800 (its OC'd to 800 because the motherboard didn't show it right)
Grahics: XFX Geforce 8800GTX XXX
all with Vista Home Premium

No game should do this. I am not sure if its my set up or if its Vista/the fact the game is Beta/or my processor. Need any other information on my comp?

As for improvements, here's what I think would work best:
1. Improved AI
2. The diplomacy and how the AI changes it so much really annoys me
3. Some other way to tell that there is an artifact at a planet, such as a small icon when zoomed out.
4. Special "combat" camera angles, so when there's a fight the camera could maybe pan around the fight and follow fighters.
5. Make the capital ships different prices, and not all the same.

There's my ideas...