Here's a collection of my thoughts while playing:
The research panel was not particularly obvious. At first I didn't realise that changing to a different category would select it and deselect my previous choice. This meant that I researched Diplomacy first by mistake when I meant to research Planetary Improvement. It was a bit unclear as to whether you were allowed to pick one from each category to research simultaneously (which would have been a break from tradition, I know 
). I think the research screen could do with a big "Currently researching: Xeno Foo Missiles 400/600 +20 per turn (10 turns remaining)" at the bottom.
The mechanics for the first ship out of the shipyard seemed a bit odd, as one seemed to be partially pre-built. I built a very cheap ship, not realising the extra manufacturing would go to waste. A tooltip for this case would have been helpful, or allowing it to be carried over to the next ship.
Some minor things:
- sometimes the tooltips took too long to appear, which was slightly frustrating. IMO even 200ms is too long.
- typo in ideology Games of Strength: bread -> breed
I've only been playing for an hour so I'll add to this post when I find new stuff.