I'm loving the alpha so far, I know it's very early but it's actually a lot of fun even in this early state. I do have a couple of comments and questions, these things may fall into the 'coming in the beta or finished game' category, these may have been mentioned before, they may be being worked on, I don't know...if so please forgive me.
I don't like the two govern buttons, one on top and one on bottom. It's not very intuitive, they both bring up windows that look almost identical, and it's not obvious that they're for different things. All of the colony management stuff should be on the planet screen. I would just incorporate all of the planet governing elements into the main planet screen and do away with the bottom 'govern' button and colony governing pop up screen entirely. So you could just click 'manage' and have all of the colony's management on one screen including the production wheel.
I would like to be able to zoom out in the tech tree, or at least change the icons too be much smaller. They're too big as is.
I really don't the very sharp border shapes. Basically, if the smallest unit is the single hex tile, then your influence border is just a bigger hex, and your range is yet a bigger hex, and the galaxy is just another big hex. Using hexes should allow for much more organic and rounded influence and range borders (look at Civ V) and also a round galactic border.
There should be a tool tip for discovered stars showing more info (number of planets, number of habitable planets, etc). I notice a lot of items missing tool-tips, everything should have a tool tip.
Will there be a screen eventually for ships similar to the 'intelligence report' in GC2 that shows a clear 3d picture of the ship as well as the details of it?
I miss the galaxy map. I'd like to click one button and see a large, clear map of the current state of the galaxy.
Will there be a colony screen showing a list of colony's with a ton of info for each that will allow us to basically run our empire from one screen (like in GC2)?
Thanks, and keep up the good work SD.