hi,

i got the game recently and really like it, but i encountered a few things which would make it a lot better in my opinion.

1. the unit cap. i think a fixed unit cap is not a good thing for a game like this. It should be dependant on the number of planets you control, because as it currently is, your empire becomes weaker by every planet you conquer. i think the unit cap should be (a base number + (x per planet)).
for example cap ships: 10 + (1 for each planet you control).
this wouldnt kill the balance of the game, because a bigger empire requires a lot of ships for defense. if you play for example with 4 players on a 20 planet map and lets say, one player has 14 planets and the others 2 each.
If the 3 weaker parties will decide to attack the big empire together, it is much more likely that the number of cap ships on each side would match and the fight will be even.
As it is now, the big empire will probably lose either a lot of ships and/or planets.
 
On a big map, let's say 100 planets, 7 small empires 5 planets each, one big 65 planets => 105 vs. 75 cap ships. The big empire can probably afford all ship slots, the others not, and again it would be much more even as it is now.
Of course the balance will be thrown off a little, the more players are defeated, but if you control 90% of the planets, the fun part of the game is over anyway.

2. the fleet ai. what i have encountered quite often during attacks on one of my planets is, that if the attacker cannot win, he usually will retreat, and my ships will go after him.
That is perfectly ok, BUT if another party attacks the very same planet, my whole fleet will still go for all the reatreating ships, as they were their first targets, and ignore the more imminent threat which just appeared.
It happened very often to me that a lot of my structures were destroyed, planet inhabitants killed and remaining ships destroyed, because the main part of my fleet in that system was chasing the "kodak light frigate of evil", while a pirate raid or something else came into the gravity well and started fooling around.

So maybe an ai rule can be set which makes your ships ignore retreating enemies while non retreating ships are in the same gravity well. Or have a priority table for each well, which sets retreating ships on low and attacking ships on high, and the ships will go automatically for those with high priority.