I enjoy what has been accomplished thus far with the game, but there are a few issues I'd like to discuss;

Camera is ‘hinky’ sometimes

Once in awhile, when I go to zoom in on a unit or planet, it seems the camera freezes momentarily, and then suddenly I it zooms to an extreme closeup of where I am looking. Not sure what causes this strange stutter, but it happens regularly, and is a bit annoying. To be clear, it is not because my computer cannot handle the graphics, as I have 3GB of RAM, a Geforce 8600 256MB, and P4 3.6GH processor - more than enough for the game.

Pirates did my work for me?

For 3 games on the largest scenario map (I want my custom galaxy back, btw!  ), the pirates have killed 2 of 3 factions for me. The AI was on ‘medium’. While that is a little interesting, it doesn’t make for a very fun game. I was able to 'walk' through about 3/4 of the galaxy.

No discernable uses for heavenly bodies

While the inclusion of asteroid belts, gas giants, and other similar heavenly bodies is cool, the fact that they serve no purpose or use in the game makes me wonder why they were included. Don't get me wrong, I like them...but I would like to see these areas have some sort of affect.

Perhaps one of these affects is that the high gravity destroys small ships, causes them to slow down to a crawl, or prevents them from leaving. This can serve as strategic variables that will force users to work around, (I like it when you get a curve ball like that, anyhow) or work with. For example, in the aforementioned example, I would be forced to use only cap ships if I wanted to traverse through that particular system. If is the ONLY way to proceed, then I would then be forced to use a cap ship’s special ability to colonize, as a colonist frigate could not traverse the star system. Alternatively, I could surprise an opponent that may not be expecting me to use that system, but instead I jump in 3 or 4 cap ships.

Some other ideas I had:

* Damage over time - corrosive nebula

* No shields - heavenly body somehow disables shields of all units

* Shield regeneration - the heavenly body somehow aids in shield regeneration

* Increased Accelleration - units experience increased manueverability in this gravity well

* No [weapon type] discharge - while in this area, a certain weapon type (randomly generated?) is unable to discharge. This could cut both ways, depending on the faction you were a part of!

Well, I had a few other ideas where this was concerned, but there's a lot of fun stuff you could do with this! I hope this helps.

I guess the only other thing I would add to all this, is that I noticed that when ships (especially frigates) are burning, and you zoom up close to them, the flames are sometimes hanging out in the space next to the ship. Just a small graphical anomoly, but something I've noticed...