I realize its still a long road to public release, and perhaps there are higher priorities than a polished UI, but I would like to at least suggest some food to thought to approaching judging whether its good or not for release prior to it actually being released. Ambiguity, confusion and/or uncertainty due to lack of clarity with presented controls or information I think can steepen the learning curve for a game. An element of the current UI I would point to as an example where this occurs is in galaxy setup -- under the top section of 'Star Systems,' there are four options: 'Star Frequency,' 'Planet Frequency,' 'Habitable Planet Frequency' and 'Extreme Planet Frequency.' Most of us old hat players would be familiar with the gist of these from GC2, but -- as with GC2 -- there is some lack of clarity here. It took awhile of creating new games (not just time playing them, of course, specifically with the setup, an iteration of playing is required to get the hang) that Star Frequency is how frequently stars appear -- simple enough -- and, implicitly, the actual number of stars will vary by this by the map size selected. So far, so good ... but with the three different planet setup controls, things are not quite so clear.
They could be interpreted to mean there's some total pool of planets, and each of the three categories are different categories -- Habitable Planet Frequency, Planet Frequency, and Extreme Planet Frequency; that is, 'Planet Frequency' in this interpretation which is valid due to UI ambiguity is simply the number of planets that are neither Habitable nor Extreme, or -- in other words -- 'dead planets' that are, by and large, utterly useless.
Ambiguously, it could also be interpreted as 'Planet Frequency' representing the total frequency of planets around stars, 'Habitable' representing the proportion of planets that fall into the Habitable category, Extreme into its category, and some leftover amount hidden with no UI control nor even display between the two options to be those dead planets.
After playing a number of games, a player will learn them (or, again, 'old hat' players from GC2 might remember and presume GC3 uses the same definitions behind the controls as GC2) -- but until it happens, its an example of UI ambiguity that steepens the learning curve and could add to the learning curve frustration for first-time-ever-players (those whom have never played the game before, nor any of the previous iterations).
My point with this post is not to ask about what these individual controls mean to get an answer, since I infer that from GC2 which had, unfortunately, similar ambiguity, but to point out that however obvious it might be to the GC3 design team what they meant with UI elements such as these, they are ambiguous from an objective standpoint, and that ambiguity might lead some first time players to giving up in frustration, which in turn means negative reviews for the game and might steer them away from being repeat Stardock customers.
Nothing can completely stop folk from having a negative experience, of course -- some folk might be oblivious to what a TBS is and think anything 'space strategy game' = RTS = Starcraft and find themselves bored with a TBS or somesuch, but there's a great deal of flux that I think taking a brand new customer's POV to evaluating something can make a difference, and push at least some customer reviews from negative to positive. I hope each and every UI element gets looked at from this perspective.
Thanks for considering my thoughts!