I watched a little of the gameplay on the eXplorminate YouTube channel and couldn't resist joining the Alpha! So far it is really exciting me with all of the new changes, yet still retains that old familiarity. I can't wait to see this game grow into a bigger and better game than GalCiv3.

Here are my observations and wishes after playing 50 turns:

• Move artifact buttons away from turn button. I could see myself accidentally clicking an artifact when I meant to end turn.
• Some notifications like ship upgrades should be on the turn button. In fact, I think I’d prefer to have all notifications on or near the turn button like a standard 4x. I never pay attention to them where they are at now and I feel like I’m missing things.
• Colonizing non-core worlds with full sized colony ships seems like overkill. All that time and effort put into 1 or 2 level planet? Maybe create a core world colonizer that takes some serious effort and a standard colonizer that takes much less time and resources.
• I'd like to be able to snap to the location of a survey report or any other story based pop-up, so I know where on the map this is happening.
• There's no indication of what research just completed.
• Quests should be called missions or something more in keeping with the sci-fi theme.
• Mining one asteroid tile completed all 4 in the chain. Is that right? If so, I love it!
• I'd like to be able to flag planets I'd like to prioritize for colonization. Larger planets more suitable for core worlds should be able to stand out somehow.
• Modules and manufacturing relics have the same icon in the resource bar.
• The manufacturing icon on the map looks too similar to the Krynn logo.
• I'd like to be able to have pop-up tooltips work while the survey report screen is up to see what kind of resources I need, what type of weapons nearby enemies have, what my income is, etc. It would help me to make my decision.
• Quests, planet events and survey reports should be more cosmetically dissimilar to easily tell them apart at a glance.
• Having to produce modules to upgrade starbases is like the old days of needing to build a constructor ship for each upgrade (although I did notice it wasn’t all upgrades). It wasn’t very fun then and I don’t see the appeal now.
• I would like to start with the resource bar full but with everything at zero so I could see all potential resources or when I'm out of modules, etc.
• Colonized planets don't appear colonized when zoomed out into the icon
• I'd like to see new tech, buildings, abilities, etc. state what research they came from. It would help me to learn the tech tree better and know which things are most useful and should be prioritized, how to get them, etc.
• I went 50 turns and only had common research cards. That wasn’t too fun.
• A precursor ship and gateway shipyard appeared with no explanation
• Conquest victory status said 70% when none of the 12 civs were defeated

The game is already pretty polished for an alpha and I can't wait for release day! Good luck team!