I've been playing quite a bit on Sins 1.  I'm not a professional player but I've spent enough time on this brand to be comfortable about my feelings below. However, I have not intensively played Sins 2 as it was just released yesterday and I was not part of the open beta (So it is likely I missed a few things, please be indulgent).

This first post will compile all of my subsequent feedback. I will reorganize it a bit over time also to make categories clearer.

>> Love
+ Great graphics (Most light effects look great, even the dynamic lights from the background of space)
+ Great ballistics (intercepting missiles and all)
+ Love the planet movement & prediction
+ Overall, the interface improvement are very welcome
+ Always such a deep gameplay
+ So many changes to understand, that's challenging in a good way
+ Announced 4th mysterious faction
+ Good optimization (the game never slowed down even late game) and stability (bye bye minidumps it seems)
+ I like that some voice acting is more accurate about what happens (stating which ship has sustained heavy damage for instance, it's much better than "our capital ship has lost its shields"... yeah, which one?), this helps a lot when many things are happening
+ Forgot to mention this but I like that now colony ships don't settle on the planet immediately and wait for dangerous siege frigates to be destroyed first.

>> Feedback for improvements
Visuals Impressions
- The ships look "smaller" compared to Sins 1. I like to imagine one tiny dot of light being the equivalent of a large window but on some ship designs it does not feel that way.
- All resource asteroids look the same and are all placed facing the same direction. That's totally minor but It was very quickly obvious.
- Ships seem to shoot at the exact same point of the target. Although there is no real problem with it, on larger targets (especially orkulus starbases as it aims at the center that is very thin) it "looks" weird. Distributing the shots here and there on the target surface would look nicer.
-  When the advent coronata titan is built, it kind of looks like a big baby that does not know how to swim with a buoy around it (not exactly threatening ^^).
- More variety in the way ships are destroyed would be great and visually rewarding. For instance the killing shot could make a hole in the hull, if it's a laser it may cut the ship off... Just like the cinematic of Rebellion's intro.

Accessibility / Readability / Understanding / Unclear Game Mechanics
- The tutorial is good for starting, but it seems to ignore lots of details. I have no idea where to find accurate information about some game mechanics (and I'm not sure it's right to rely always on fans to make videos and wiki about an in depth manual that should be provided in game). I would love having an official and exhaustive in game "SoaSE2-pedia" reference.
- I think it is difficult to recognize easily the research icons at the beginning, especially when they are not researcheable yet as they have no color. Maybe the color should be visible or more pastel ?
- Research icons may lack the immediate readability they had in sins 1. Many are "pretty" but they fail to convey the exact idea of what is behind them. From what I've read, they were AI generated which is fine to deliver quickly, but with such complex research tree you want to pinpoint the item you are looking for immediately and not hover every little rectangle or use the search function.
- In the late game, when many researches are already done, it is tricky to visualize easily on the tech trees those that are not done yet. I think there is something to improve with the borders of the icons (the current border is probably too thick and the light effect for some reason makes it more cumbersome). I'm thinking of an animated scanning animation that goes from left to right and illuminates only already done researches and the arrows.
- Some icons are less readable than sins 1 ("Group Jump" and "Engagement Range" could be enhanced).
- Too much "blue" in general. The buttons when not using fleets become blue, so you have to rely on the shape only to identify them. In Sins 1, colors helped identify topics (yellow = ships, green = planets...) for easier identification.
- When an asteroid has an extractor, the asteroid icon is no longer visible (you only see some structure in space). For the sake of learning and overal readability, it would be better to see that structure on top of the asteroid icon.
- Some abilities are only visible when the camera is very close, which is annoying to react if cast by an enemy (eg: subspace rupture).
- I don't understand how/when junra fabricators and other building frigates appear. They seem to spawn after a certain amount of time, their number is capped by something... I would like to know how this works so I can feel more in control. I'm not sure this is documented somewhere.
- I'm not sure when a planet upgrade will start generating an upkeep, its cost and how it is calculated. It makes it hard to know if it is worth it or not.
- Sometimes I can see enemies moving far away, could it be that my scouts around there show me who travels on phase lines ??

Visual Glitches
- Anti aliasing does not always seem very efficient (see advent hangar defense).
- When ships explode, broken pieces of the ship may appear before explosion, or explosion finishes while the non exploded ship may still be there for a few frames.
-  Some attacks show no visual impacts at all, the "bullet" just disappears when touching its target (eg advent fighters space structures).

Customization
- Missing many player symbols from Sins 1 (where is my 5 branches shuriken icon ?) => Solved, they are split per faction now.
- Ship color customization seems very limited. I can't find a way to get the more vivid colors I expect for my fleet. Also moving from 1 to 2 colors even changes the tone of the first color. A bit more freedom here would be great, and if people do ugly things, well, that's on them. You could also enable players to show default colors for other players if you're afraid "pink and teal" Kol Battlecruisers would ruin immersion for them .

Missing stuff
- No campaign at launch, but it seems to be on it's way for later so... I can wait. But it's usually a nice and seamless way to make a tutorial.
- Not enough victory & loss condition (central planet, flagship, science, culture, diplomacy...). This makes the game way too warfare focused and it misses dimensions to make decisions as interesting as in Sins 1 in that respect.
- Deep and bilateral diplomacy. I liked that in Sins 1 you had to build up a relationship both ways before claiming an alliance. And it had plenty of stages before symbiosis. It was indeed slow, but it avoided quick changes of mind. And once you had an ally, you worked so hard for it that it was a hard choice to turn against them.
- It seems random maps never generate wormholes or multi-star maps
- Stellar Phenomena.

Capital Ships Ability & Upgrade Management
- When a capital ship ability is already at the maximum, you should not display the upgrade button at all (even if greyed out) as it could mean that it is still upgradeable but on the next level.
- Also, it would be simpler to see in the "+" button or somewhere the current level of each capacity before upgrade (it saves from hovering every icon).
- When a ship gets a level up, it would be nice to show a small "+" in the list of ships that displays on the right. The messages that display on top disappear after a short while and then you wonder which ship was concerned.

General Quality of Life
- I don't know how to expand the stacked ships and structures icons on the upper right corner. I want to see which ships are the most damaged and easily select them to move into safety, or aim at the most damaged enemy ship. If the option exists, I missed it (not documented in the tutorial it seems). => Solved, it can be made with ctrl+click (found on youtube tips video)
- In Sins 1, it was possible to see the amount of antimatter in numbers next to the ship icon. Now it has to be hovered for the details tooltip at the bottom right. I would prefer seeing the numbers in addition to the bars here.
- When displaying all info (planet names, orbits ), the map is quite crowded. I wondered if the planet names and planet color rings could be smaller to avoid too many overlapping things.
- I don't use an american QWERTY keyboard, so I had to remap many buttons for the key binding to make sense. It would be great to have that managed upfront by the game, detecting keyboard layout from windows and binding the appropriate keys.
- In the research menu buttons, a small number showing how many researches are queued, and also maybe a miniature showing which one is currently being researched.
- It is difficult to understand which planet items are compatible with which planet type. It took me a moment to understand that "alloy foundry" only seems to work on terran planets (not on asteroids, ice nor volcanic). It should be somewhere in the item description.
- Please restore the icon on top of planets when they are controlled and the camera is zoomed. I always wonder if a planet has been taken or not and I need to zoom out to galaxy map or place the cursor on it to make sure.
- Maybe avoid having planets with too similar names on the same game. I had Lotharos and Lautaro pretty close from each other. I can imagine how it would be messy to coordinate with a friend on what to do and where.
- Is there a pointer that can be used to show something or an area to teammates ?
- Sometimes when you hover on an ship or else located in the right of the screen, the tooltip window appears on top if it which is quite puzzling and uncomfortable. In that case the pop up should appear somewhere else on the screen.
- Show module compatibility before buying them (eg: "unassailable fortress" does not work on asteroids, but when I figured it out, I already spent my influence on it).
- You cannot queue a collect derelict with another action (it will cancel the collection). That's a bit annoying when you just want to let one capital ship here and anticipate on his next task.
- Being able to see unused phase points as Vasari.
- There is probably room to squeeze a bit more the right menu with the list of ships. When expanded it easily goes beyond 1 page.
- I would love to be able to cancel the last order in a sequence to avoid having to redo the whole list again (eg: I want to attack several ships in a specific order but accidentally click nearby and create a movement order instead, at the moment I must redo the whole sequence).
- There used to be a "find ship" button in Sins 1. Although it lacked a bit granularity (should be on a "per ship" basis) I sometimes search for some ships (especially scouts) to see if they are dead or not. This would be a welcome functionality.
- Enough with the discord pop up when launching the game every time.
- If there were a way to "reorganize" the order of targets to shoot at (just like there is a way to reorganize research), that would be great. So that when the ship you're targeting is escaping, you don't have your whole fleet chasing around and you can remove it as a target or put it at the end of the list without redoing the full list of instructions from start.
- In the "colonized planets" screen, I should see the number of logistics/defense slots here (total, used and remaining) without having to click on everything to find where there is room for a new structure.
- Frequently, ships tend to suicide attack a starbase while there are easier targets to attack without (or with less) danger. There should be a way to avoid this without too much micro (even if I give them a target, they may want to go back to the starbase afterwards unless I meticulously plan for everything). A default behavior could be "in absence of a direct order, attack whatever is safe first" (not in range of cannons nor starbase, then in range of cannons or cannons themselves, then wait for order before rushing starbase). Also ships like to spread strangely and every one shoots one thing. As a result, everything is damaged a bit but nothing is destroyed. Again you need to micro this to avoid problems which can be a bit annoying.
- In sins 1, there was a message saying that an enemy is traveling towards one of your worlds. Now it seems the message only mentions it once they are already on your planet. I don't think I heard an audio notification mentioning incoming enemy fleet. This should go along with the tech that enables seeing them 1 jump away from my empire.
- Planetary auto placement is useful but sometimes makes weird choices. I would like to be able to rotate some of the constructions in orbit one by one (instead of moving them all at once). Otherwise it prevents me a bit from using auto placement.
- Add an in-game feedback report (see what Songs of Conquest has done in that respect) :  you press the "B" key 3 times, it opens an input window with current screenshot. You can Explain the issue, severity, repro, circle around stuff on the screenshot, and explain your problem/experience/suggestion. This could streamline things for everyone.
- Sometimes, scout ships go back exploring planets that have been visited a minute ago while there are plenty of unknown planets to explore. In my current example, they explored already the 3 planets around my capital, and there is no other choice than going to the center of the map. Instead, one scout went back exploring on this dead end of the galaxy which is just a waste of time.
- Once the whole galaxy has been explored, it might be simpler for the user to not see any cristalline planet related tech if there is none to colonize for instance. It would lighten the very dense research tree. Overall, once it is certain a tech won't have any effect and is not on the path to unlock something useful, it should be greyed out for better readability.
- Instead of showing "starbase has too many of these items" with a red exclamation mark, place a green tick to show that this is already built. At least it will no longer be confused with a missing prerequisite.
- The scale of some post game graphs is irrelevant to some of the data presented. For instance : Market metal sold : the maximum sold in the game is 4600 for me, my opponent is 0, yet the scale goes up to 75 144

Fleets vs Idle Ships
- If I assign a hotkey to a fleet, I'd love to see that in the fleet interface on the top right. Also, having icons that kind of represent the fleet composition would help, or being able to name them AND see the name in the top left corner. In some older RTS games, when you select all your catapults and add them to a control group, you may see a "siege" icon there. Same with archers, etc. There is some room for easier fleet management here.
- I have 2 fleets : A and B. I decide do build 30 ships for fleet B. At some point after 10 ships are made, I decide to merge fleet B into fleet A. Now the 20 ships that will be built will simply join the gravity well of the factory planet. I would rather have them join fleet A.
- A tool to find all ships outside of fleets would be very handy.

Better Default Unit Behaviors & More Options
- Fleets should have "group jump" enabled by default. Even if I know it's not the case yet, on almost every game start I forget about it and my ships are all over the place.
- I had the Jarrasul Evacuator near a planet to colonize it and another ship with colony nanites (consumable). I left the fleet for a few moments alone and realized that the colony nanites were used while it would have been "free" for the jarrasul. I think when the same ability is available for free, that one should be used. Both whips were in range from the planet at the same distance.
- I would love to be able to assign "target priorities" to my ships in advance (like a default behavior). For instance : This group of my ships should attack the weakest and closest enemy of this type. The purpose is that I can plan ahead should they encounter problems while I'm looking somewhere else.
- Another thing I would love to be able to automate : ask a ship to retreat when below a certain % of hit points. It is hard to micromanage everything and doing all of these actions gives the game a "starcraft" vibe I like less.

Maps
- Playing a lot with the 2 player random map now: there are always the same 2 minor factions which is a bit sad and predictable from a strategy perspective.
- Map generation is not always very balanced. Sometimes you get a gas giant nearby which takes forever to go through, or a minor faction that basically takes a gravity well on your critical path to the center while your opponent does not have this. There should be a "competitive balanced random" like in Sins 1

Sound
- Sometimes, your ships get blocked by a phase jump inhibitor and you get a message to be aware of that, which is good. But when that inhibitor is precisely on a path some of your automated ships (I guess those that accompany trade ships) go through, it becomes an uninterrupted spam of that message. I don't have a suggestion for this, I understand it should be mentioned the first time but something alternative should be found afterwards.
- Add Sins 1 soundtrack to improve music rotation while playing (I have the impression there is less variety). Alternative: a music folder where I could drop my custom music with specific names so it would be used at the appropriate time (eg: "vasari_combat_19", "advent_quiet_03").
- Overall too much crew talking for useless things. The Vasari are chatterboxes and as their voices are "weird", this is bothering when it's too frequent or the speech too long (eg: "The death will be quick but not painless, hahaha"). Some are also useless (eg: "Control group created") is really not something I need to hear.
- Voices could be more useful by pointing who did what. Eg : "we are attacked by the orange empire" or whatever. Unless this would bother some people from a lore perspective, it would be more useful.
- Did I hear correctly a Vasari ship say "You HAZ no chance.
- "Insufficient antimatter" should be a vocal message.
- Phase tunnel opening and phase traveling sfx is too loud when the camera is close. It's especially annoying when playing Vasari Exodus because the camera is on your ship. Maybe it's particular to my setup because I use big loudspeakers but the sound is not loud for the rest of the game, yet these sfx just kill my ears as the volume seems much higher.
- I actually miss the old creepy sound that was in Sins 1 when you selected the Orkulus Starbase (it kind of sounded like a machine chorus). It was a bit scary and felt impressive. Also, I'm less of a fan of the new Vasari voices when some ships are damaged and they say "do we fall back ?" with a scared voice. It does not really align with how I imagined the Vasari as a fearless / all-in faction. I would say sound design could reinforce this a bit more.
- When you pause the game to give a series of orders (attack this, this and this for instance), when unpaused, all vfx will play in a row, which is not really pleasant if you gave like 20 orders.

Game Balance
- The tempest ships seem very powerful compared to their cost and tier. The AI seems to be able to swarm them and then becomes very hard to stop.
- Phase Resonnance seems very underwhelming compared to Unity and Trade from the other factions. It gives a temporary boost only and is pretty hard to achieve early game (logistic slots seem just too valuable for this). Researches provide similar bonuses (forever and most often stronger). It only seems to be viable with the tier V research "Mobile Resonance Capacitor". I wonder how other players see this.

Gameplay Feedback & Ideas
- With the orbiting planets, it feels strange now that resource asteroids remain static in a gravity well. There could be room for something here. Not trivial to do though,z as they could collide with other things.

Localization
- Abyssmal French translation (I switched to English in the tutorial because it was painful and ridiculous). "Light Factory" is translated into something like "Usine de Lumière" (~ Brightness factory). It feels very cheap, like it was done on google translate and no one checked it.
- There are also a few typos here and there in English but that's fine.
- One planet is called "Salopia". This is way to close from a French curse word, believe me, you want to change that (although it's sometimes hilarious online).

Game Purchase
- No details on what the premium edition contains on the steam page on launch (had to do research somewhere else). Also, I'm not sure if what I'm paying upfront makes it worth vs if purchased separately. I just decided to trust you that it would be a good deal. => Solved, there is an image on the Steam page that needs to be expanded for details.
- The game shoud be on GOG (with all future add ons released simultaneously there if you see what I mean). Bought it on Steam because I had no choice but that's not cool

Enemy AI
- The AI often takes very weird decisions. So far I play up to hard and the level above, and sometimes I see a huge fleet (significantly more powerful than mine) turning around when they meet my fleet. It does not make sense because I would have been blown up to pieces should the fight have happened.

Bugs
- In the post game stats, categories can be expanded but not collapsed.
- Game replay : the timeline does not seem to work (went in fast forward 10x, then tried to jump further in the game but it remained fast forward 10x).
- The fleet icon on the upper-left tends to shift down little by little and is no longer at the top even though I had only 1 fleet thoughout the game.
- "Player's Guide" page advertised in the game menu is inaccessible.
- Ctrl+click selects all ships of the same type when they are ungrouped, BUT if they are grouped in several stacks, it won't work (only the clicked stack will be selected).
- Group jump does not seem to work properly all the time (I don't have a repro). Just after some time, I realize that my fleet starts to split (up to 3 different planets) while moving with group jump activated.
- Weird but I encountered an AI player that had both a classical AI name in roman letters but also plenty of chinese writings in the end. Seems like the game was translated in that language and some text was not parsed properly and got concatenated.
- Sometimes right clicks to order ships to move around a planet, or queue attack orders are not taken into account and I have to redo the input several times.
- Until now, the Jarrasul Evacuator was colonizing whenever it was safe and it had enough antimatter. Now for some reason it just sits here, full of antimatter in an empty gravity well and a neutral planet.
- Josutra Fabricator provided by the minor factions does not seem to work at least as Vasari Exosus until I research retrofit (it's provided at the planet but does not produce anything). My question is : is there any use for it or is this a bug?
- Not all space objects seem to have hitboxes. The space debris you want to collect for xp and rare resources can be shot through without problems. I don't know which other objets have no hitboxes but it bothers me a bit.
- You cannot pin the star like you pin a planet with the list of fleets.
- When you have a fleet with reinforcements coming from another planet, and your fleet goes to a direction where it will have to go back where the producting factories are, the newsly produced ships are very likely to jump ahead of time to target destination instead of waiting for the main fleet that has to pass through that gravity well.
- From a bigger distance during battles, some projectiles seem to visually go beyond their targets instead of disappearing when hitting it (the large green shots from the jarrasul for instance in my case). I think it's the icon of the target ship when looked from afar that is not accurately placed
- Small visual glitch on the Karrastra Destructor (unsure if it's permanent) : there is a small green line in front of them when zoomed a lot. It looks like the line that appears when ordering a move but that line seems to sweep/scan in space in front of it. It can only be seen with the cursor on it.
- Subspace Rupture: Currently on level 2, the tooltip says 30 dmg/s but it only does 5 dmg/s (could be wrong on other levels too)