I have played the beta, and my thoughts are:

Mine clean up- must need tool. even if its expensive but dealing with 40+ mines individually sucks (im leaving out the bug with scout ships im sure you know of)

Mine deployment- I suggest instead of laying an individual mine lay a field with a radius IE 500 [i love the lack of micro and macro+ dont macro mines please- I think you would agree this game is more macro], just up the antimatter cost and cooldown. the field would be a circle that you place, AND/OR an option of laying mines in pre-arranged partterns if you dont want to a field lay down. IE outskirts of grav well, around planets, around structures, random (could add an additional option of tightness of field, loose medium tight like fleet formation)

Starbases- 1800c for a hanger? id rather build them individually via tactial slots. i recommend upgrading starbase hanger to 3 or 4- there bad asses right? give em a bad ass hanger especially for 1800c.

starbases continued- dmg needs to scale better. IE lvl 1 starbase should not do the same dmg as a lvl 2 starbase, make an upgrade slot dedicated to uping pure dmg, theres a defence one why not an attack one? ( i only got up to lvl 4 but im pretty sure i didnt see a difference of dmg, if i missed it my mistake) ALSO they build fast, well atleast seem to, you couldnt build the deathstar that fast thats for damn sure.

ps, Vasari enforced loyalty imo should be passive aswell as giving passive to other races

On a whole game level not beta, I would revisit the less used capital ships and the vasari support frigates. I say this cuase I play vasari 75% of the time and vasarie could use better support frigates (excluding carrier, mine layer, enforcer)

I think its a great direction, hope to see more.

O before i hit submit, I'd be willing to bet the desync comes from 1 computer being slower than the other- atleast 100% of my desync's. they only desync after the game gets in to the full swing. Even when it gets huge it never seems to lag when I know the other computer should be. hopefully this will help someone else. Im gonna try turning down fleet size and graphic settings.