When you start the with the Vasari on the Pandemonium map you don't have enough fleet capacity to build a capital ship at the start. This forces you to scrap one of your frigates before you can start building the cap ship. Slows you down and almost cripples the Vasari on this map.

The issue is that 0% structures impede the progress of ships. All you have to do is plunk one down in the path of an enemy ship and it is forced to (slowly) maneuver around it or blow it up - and since it won't automatically target a 0% structure you have to micromanage this.

I don't know if perhaps I'm missing something, but is there a way to click drag your viewpoint while in the game? I see the right mouse button rotates, and the middle button zooms (for some reason I really like the Zoom To Cursor setting)

for us mappers it would be a great if we could fix artifacs to certain planets like it is currently possible with planet boni in the the planets entity file (currently only used by the pirate base)
That way we could create new mission specific planets that would always have certain special abilities which could be used to create "locations of interest" in otherwise maybe worthless spots or to simply point out and enhance the battle of a hotspot.

I wish that when i press

1 (selecting group 1), then holding SHIFT, 2

The Effect was not that I now select group 2 and not 1, but that I now command Both Groups but neither are changed in terms of group bindings.

I don't object to the whole management of planets being abstracted down to one or two upgrades (although I'm more a 4x person than rts). But it should feel like you are really improving the infrastructure on your planet. Changing the description and the picture of the button you press so it feels less like just upping some statistics would probably help a lot. Maybe it's just the placeholders?