So far, I've put in enough time in the beta to feel like I can offer a valid first opinion of the game at large.

I love that there has been a new branch added to the tech options! I feel this adds much more depth and room for expansion and it is this branch with which my comments are concerned.

First, as I mentioned, I feel this branch ("Security" for the Advent) adds much more room to expand, considering how few techs there are to study in it, compared with the number in the outright hostile and benign paths of study. I feelt a little disapointed, however, how little of the research options had anything to do with the pre-existing defense structures (I can, however, only speak for the Advent, correct me if this is not accurate for the other races). Maybe there could be tech you could study that would allow your basic turrets to be specialized like you can specialize the starbases. The research could then be spilt into something along the lines of Starbases and Tactical Defenses, similarly to how the other main branches are spilt into sub-catagorys.

Something more specific that seemed a little mis organized to me was that, for the Advent, only about half the starbase techs actually required you to first study the frigate that let you build the SBs. The other half did not, and this seemed to be inconsistent to me.

Those be my thoughts. Cheers!