Hey!

First off, awesome game!  I love it so far, and I can't wait to see the end product!  I really think this is going to be an incredible game

I just played my first Rebellion game, and the first major annoyance I experienced was with the UI for the research tree.  A few things:

1. Unless you click on the Research button, and then click through each of the individual trees, and in each tree look for the *slightly* blooming button, you will not know what is currently being researched.
2. If you have multiple things queued up for research, you have no idea what order they are queued in.
3. On high-resolution screens, it is very difficult to see the tiny little grey triangle in the bottom left that indicates that something has already been researched.
4. The greying-out of the tech buttons doesn't at all clarify if you can't research something because you lack resources, or if you need more research stations.
5. Lastly, some of the buttons are so dark / grey, they look like they are constantly grayed out!

Some ideas for fixing this that would be really, really nice:

• For #1-#2, if you could just show a small queue of the queued research items, for military and civilian, on the main HUD, that would be awesome.  It wouldn't take much screen real-estate (just use the buttons that are in the tech tree as little icons).  This is how the Homeworld games did it, and it was very, very useful.
• For #3, if you could just put a green alpha over, or a check mark, or something over the tech buttons other than the tiny little triangle, it would be far more visible.  I think it would be nice if players can open the tech tree, and immediately parse where they are.  Most other games with tech trees achieve this easily - look at Civ, Blizzard games, anything.
• For #4 - You are already displaying icons over build items in the main HUD bar that indicate why you cannot build something (resources, logistics / tactical slots).  Why not do the same thing for the tech tree?
• For #5 - If #3 gets changed, this will no longer be an issue.

Issues regarding the primary interface:

• When you zoom way out, all you can see over your ships is your emblem, overlaid all over itself.  This is really unhelpful - you can convey the same information simply with color.  Why not give us icons to show us ship type, in the color of the player?  Seeing a huge cloud of my emblem totally doesn't help me organize anything.
• There is no reason not to constantly display the infocard of the active planet / structure / ship.  At the very least, give us the option to enable that. I am playing on a wide resolution screen, and after I have selected something, trying to center my mouse over that unit's particular icon just to see the infocard is not only difficult, but obnoxious.  If I have selected a unit, why not just pop up the info card?  That will also make it easier to know that you have indeed selected the right unit, instead of trying to parse that info out of the empire tree.

Even if you don't want to make all of these the default mode, it would be great to at least have the option of enabling it!

The game is amazing. Thanks so much for doing a beta!