I known many people have very strong opinions when it comes to 4X strategy games, and I want to say I am all for complex 4X strategy games I just don't like two systems that does the same thing which will lead to my first complaint / area that I feel needs immediate attention and should not hit the shelves the way it currently is implemented.
Customizing the Planet : I have read a few post on this and seen may different feelings. Mine is that I love building Improvements on Earth or Mars or whatever new world I hit. But Governing the planet seems like it adds unnecessary depth. Like why do I need a research / manufacture / wealth grid when I have improvements. I just laid down 5 research buildings is it really not that obvious that I want more research? I can understand that all improvements are more or less nothing but percentage bonuses and so that still leaves you with how should these 11 people work if all 11 work in research then you get 0 for manufacture and 0 for wealth. But if you were going to use that ideology why use this percentage grid. Because I cannot believe you can really have 11.5 population. And if population is suppose to be in millions / billions might want to suggest that. (M / B is sufficient after number, i.e. 11.5B) I also have a problem that if each turn is a week that you can change everyone from research one week to manufacturing the next and then to wealth the third. Some one suggested stead moves would be more agreeable. I also think that maybe the population should be born researcher / worker / accountant and use those percentages to than with improvements and maybe change how you school your world to change how many of each you have so that when growth occurs every turn you would take your growth and apply it against how your schooling and that would in effect give you your researcher / worker / accountant ratio's and then that could be multiplied by your building improvements. This at least seems more plausible.
Also in this great governing window we get this 50 / 50 bar I take it this is land improvements versus shipyard improvements but it does not say that anywhere ...
If population count is really suppose to be in the billions as I would think based on Earth's current pop (7.125 billion for 2013 give or take a peon) Are we really suggesting we could fit 5 Billion people on a cargo ship to populate a new planet? And 4 Billion Solders for an invasion. In some way's numbers can really count.
Final thing on the planets why do I have to un-click every planet to get it off auto upgrade. This Auto-Upgrade Improvements should be an overall game option. I really think that late development ... Planet customization should be on just one screen. When I look at a planet I want everything on that screen.
The All Powerful U.P. : One thing I hate more than anything else is the planet protection act that AI love to say Yes to. So now I can no longer populate planets great ... If this was just for planet's in the neutral zone than I would be fine with it but your telling me I cannot populate Mars which is well within my territory because you will do what? Basically Laws are meant to be broken.
Certain Laws that come across just has me thinking really ... and what if I want to break this law. I think the U.P. is a great idea I like it but I think if the U.P. imposes a law any race / faction should be able to break it and then the U.P. just imposes some type of action against that race. Like say I settle on a new planet after they said I can't. Well now that I "broke the law" the five races can decide what my penalty should be and it could be a fine to a suspension of voting or any number of things embargo. I could go on but I just think that a more dynamic system would be awesome here.
Who doesn't like WEALTH : Let me tell you what I can buy with 4000 Wealth ( I forgot the game currency ), I can buy this medium level ship with bad ass laser or I can buy 10 technologies. Which would you rather have? Bottom Line from what I noticed buying technologies and I have heard ships as well from the AI is broken. I took my 12000 Wealth once and bought every technology ever other race had. So cool. Any rate wont spend much longer on this topic just know money should not be able to buy everything.
Which Starbase was I upgrading again? : I cannot count the times I have clicked upgrade starbase only to get this full screen window that gives me no indication where the starbase is on the map. Which means I forgot what I needed to add to it specially with so many module choices to choose from and with my 20 starbases. Oh did I mention one map I got only three viable planets (Earth, Mars, TheThirdOne) before being shut out by the U.P. So I had two starports and they did almost nothing but send out constructor after constructor after ... I think you get the point to make me a fleet of starports. It was all quite cool and all so confusing which deep space station is this 4 9 2 3 ... where is it? ... what was I going to add? ( I had also missed the part on mining ain't quite working ).
This means WAR : So I have my fair share of war, but the most interesting one was when I was told that I was going to wiped out by the race on the other side of the galaxy. The fact that my ships could not get to his territory meant I would be in for a defensive fight ... But oh wait he has the same problem. Ah lets delay this until ascension. "There will be no peace in our time." (U.P. solved this one actually with the everyone let's be friends policy, its amazing how a vote that you don't agree with can stop you from pummeling the other player) No domination victory for you 
I got LASERS now! : My first game taught me a valuable lesson kinetics suck ... and if you don't have lasers you don't have any weapons. It seems that kinetics only phase in during the end battle by which point every laser and missile has nearly destroyed you so why would you ever have kinetics. After the first game I just always used lasers and I always won. Lasers are long range and quick so they deal the damage the fastest. Everything else is just subpar. And at 50 HP and 18 DMG a hit lasers only needs to hit 3 times before destroying your opponent. Basically Weapons need to be balanced. I think lasers should be severely weaker at long range. Missile should have big damage but their delay plus counter measures should make the big damage within reason. And I think kinetics can stay small dmg but needs to produce a lot of them so a round when things are with in range would be like 1 laser / 2 missiles / 20 kinetics or something All with different damage / defense mechanics. Like a missile either misses or hits but both laser and kinetics could have percentage reductions. I will add to the weapon problem also the civilian issue. It seems like cargo ship types should get a withdraw chance. Like sure they have no armor most of the time or what not. But every round maybe it gets a small chance to somehow evade the fight. Its not like It would be sitting their trying to fight.
Research : This one is easy why is Tech Tree not a toggle button? I want to see the tech tree not the other screen which I cannot use to plan what I want to do next heck get rid of the default screen just unneeded in my opinion. And just a sarcastic question can you make the icons that represent what the tech is going to give you any smaller. Bottom Line fix this screen please it is just poor maybe try the normal 4x where initial skills of the 4 sides are in the middle and the trees branch from their ... I don't know just this current version is my least favorite display of a research tree. Civ 5 / Civ Beyond Earth / Endless Space / Endless Legend ... All other main stream 4x games have better tech tree displays than this one. I do like the techs just not the presentation.
I know this is a lot of comments and I also I added plenty of humor / sarcasm. But they are my thoughts while playing it. And I think overall the game is great but I would love to see ways of redo areas to make them clearer. Some things I point out are simple balance problems that probably can be easily fixed while other take a lot more development effort and means refactoring sections of gameplay which might not be possible at this stage. But I hope they are in some way refined.
Thanks for Reading,
Michael, Senior Test Automation Engineer