cmba2: I'm sure you have already been made aware of most of this.

I played a bit of the first game again and there are so many quality of life features that could use fixing. I have already made suggestions on a few of them. Picking up items shouldn't take you out of the action. In ES1 it was a key press to swap and a double tap to dismantle. With an inventory you can get rid of key presses altogether. All of this having to press f to pick up an item and hold f to destroy or dismantle is nuts. (I know you can just fly through items to pick them up, but it doesn't work from 800+ meters away like it did in the first game.) I have probably destroyed/dismantled over 20,000 items in ES2 and it has not gotten any better. It's very tedious and annoying that I am forced to stop playing and take my hand off my keyboard every time I want to close the item screen of every container. Why doesn't it loot like it did in the first game where you pick up an item and it automatically closes the view when you're done? I like the new inventory system but I don't need to be reminded of it every time I open a container.

Then there's the overall speed of my ship and enemy ships. Everything in ES2 is much slower. Boosting in ES2 might not drain energy as fast but it also doesn't go as fast during a fight. I don't even notice it when I'm boosting in a fight because the speed just isn't there. Boosting in ES2 is comparable to ES1 ship speed when you're not boosting. I get that now we have a drive with unlimited power to get us quickly across an area but the tradeoff is that I can no longer get around while in fights and they feel much slower. A developer needs to replay a high speed dog fight in the first game and compare the difference.

The AI doesn't see you and doesn't react. ES1 forced the player to use different fighting and flying tactics while making split second decisions. I'm sure you are still working on it. When you see a formation of enemies coming at you. They do not split off when they get closer. They stay in formation and don't move. The default turning sensitivity seems a bit low at times when I'm trying to target enemies around me. Everything overall feels a bit stiff. I would love to feel the speed and the flow and looseness of ES1.

Another major difference in the second game is how small the enemies look even if the model sizes are still the same. The red circle locator around enemies is about half the size. Maybe try setting a larger minimum size for the circle. It gives me a headache trying to spot them from far away. I play on a 32" tv so it's not the size of my screen.
Mines have been changed completely. They are really small circle things now and are hard to see and target even when you're up close to them. I was told the model sizes for mines and rockets are the same but I can visually see a major difference when I switch games. Does it have something to do with the viewport setting itself? (I prefer first person view.) I can no longer see rockets. Mines are no longer the same shape either. It's just a circle with a light on it. I like the old pill shape better at least they looked like small bombs. I like the new variety of mine effects though.
Maybe try changing the view scale to match ES1 and it might fix the size issues. But that most likely wouldn't work well with the new high resolution feel. So adjusting the model sizes on the really small stuff might be the way to go.

This isn't meant to be a negative critique of the game. It's meant to help give suggestions on things that need improving even if they don't have to match the first game. So far I like the new game.