Link to beta info
I just started playing the newest beta this morning, and have been pretty busy all day, so very initial thoughts.
New food mechanics now feel like "excess food produced" rather than "food that we magically make".
Planetary influence seems to have been buffed to a level appropriate with starbases.
Tourism is a brand new mechanic, under the hood makes sense, and I cannot wait to get some Tourism planets going. This used to be all but impossible.
Tech tree changes seem to make sense, especially with the new food and tourism mechanics.
I don't mind the ship design button being moved to shipyards, that is where I almost always accessed it from anyway when designing new ships in-game.
In general, I like very much on an initial look.