What could we as gamers, best do to assist with balancing issues and feedback?
Think it through first to make sure it makes sense. Give all the info you can. For balancing issues, "x is too powerful" or "y is useless" doesn't do anything. If you believe something is too good or not good enough, write why you think so. Give examples, etc, and finish off with how you would change it to make it more in line (again, this has to make sense in the grand scheme of things, not just in a narrow view).
For issues/bugs, make sure to save the game if it's a bug that IC would have to see in actions (ship behaviors, AI behaviors, ships stuck - things of that nature). Replays after the fact work also, but saves are better. If it's not that kind of issue, screenshots and whatever other kind of info applies (dxdiag, pc specs, etc).
For suggestions, likewise, think it through. There are a lot of things that "would be cool", but that don't really fit the game, either because it's out of scope or because it would take an enormous amount of work that's not really patch/expansion material. And, of course, be specific. "I want better diplomacy" isn't specific, but coming up with an idea of how to make missions work differently, coming up with new mission types and things like that are good.