First, I'm loving the game.

Some minor quibbles:
Fighter/Bomber/Heavy Fighter - seems these should have greater range than missiles and torpedoes. Fighters should really be the ultimate standoff weapon.
And what is the effective DPS of these techs? None of them seem particularly effective (in CA or BB class ships), and by the time you get to bigger ships, defense techs make them more or less useless.

The fighting space should be made about twice as big as it is, in my opinion. Space shouldn't feel like an arena, and it makes some ship designs that might be fun impractical (like rear facing only weapons).

Minor bug: When an alien race's tribute ends, the grammar is backwards. The games says "Your tribute to the Gnolam has ended." (When it was the Gnolams paying me....spy trades are good money makers!)

A couple more questions:
I am on my second game, and all of the races have been discovered. How long does it take for the galactic council to form? It's been at least 50 turns (since all races have made contact with each other).

Minor bug: In the combat screen, hovering over the various weapon systems, it always shows them as having the point defense modifier, regardless of which modifiers are actually in place. Luckily, the combat works correctly in actual combat, though.

Fighters are extremely weak in this game - to the point of being worthless unless modded.

Corrected bug on annual tribute showing wrong payer vs payee in unofficial code patch on nexus (V2) - not released yet.

I think in the game all races have to had contacted all other races, not just you have seen them. I have had long games where the council was not called in until I started eliminating civs because of this.

I have seen that hover bug but not looked into it as of yet.

Another request: Once they've been explored, it would be nice if, when zoomed out all the way, there was some kind of graphical indication of which wormholes connect to which.

MoO2 had this, and it certainly made planning a little easier.

Some more comments after a few more games.

First, and probably my biggest complaint: The AI really kinda sucks. I want to try playing against some human opponents just to see how much of a difference there is. I've managed to win pretty convincingly as the humans, psilons, darloks, alkari, and meklar. I was rarely pushed to a point where I though my civ was really in danger (unlike MoO2, which playing the standard races, I probably only managed a little better than 50% win rate). So at a high level, the AI is falling short.

I think possibly the biggest failing with the AI is the combat. Unless you use auto-resolve and just let it crunch numbers, the fights are pretty much a statistical battle based on the combined offense/defense of the fleets. It doesn't seem to really take into account the actual weapons/defense, though, as far as I can tell. Worse, if I have a statistical loss, I can almost inevitably take command of the battle and turn the tide pretty easily and decisively. This isn't an indication of my tactical genius, mind you, it's just that the AI doesn't really do very well in battles.

Also, the AI really spends way too much throwing around individual ships or very small groups (I wouldn't really call them fleets). Just increasing the typical size of AI fleets would make it more challenging. As it is, I can take a moderately sized fleet with good cap ships and support ships, and take on lots of small fleets with no losses, or even any real damage, and just rampage through another civ with impunity.

The last patch did a good job fixing the missile imbalance, and they are much better balanced with beams and the special weapons now. Good job with that.

Unfortunately, crashing seems to have been exacerbated with the latest update, and large fleets seem to crash/lock up pretty commonly. As noted above, when you 'escape' out of the battle and are forced to use auto-resolve, it does a really poor job on determining the outcomes.

Some things that would be nice, or should (IMO) be added to the game. First are what I would consider fixes that should be a higher priority:
- Starbases and Military outposts should be more powerful. Right now, outposts are barely comparable to a similar tech level destroyer, and starbases are about equal to a cruiser.
- - They should have more specials, and either reduce the nebulas, or give them hardened shields as soon as they are available, since half the time they are placed right in the middle of the nebulas without functional shields. (hardened shields should also apply to missile bases and orbital batteries).

IMO, a military outpost should be about equivalent to a Battleship in terms of number of weapons and specials it has. Advanced should increase that by about 30-40% (almost equivalent to a single Titan class ship).
- Starbase- Should be slightly more powerful than a single battleship (in terms of hull points, number of weapons and specials, etc.)
- Battle Station - Should be about equal to a Titan in terms of firepower, with more hull points.
- Star Fortress - should be about 1.5 x a titan in terms of weapons, and about 2 x a titan's hull points/armor.

Fighter/bomber/advanced bomber ranges should be much longer than they are. They seem otherwise reasonably balanced now.

More ship design options would be nice (IMO, there should be about 2 designs per ship class, with the exception of the doomstar). Even if that were included as an optional tech in the tree somewhere, it would be ok with me. :)

Some more tactical options in the space battles: should be able to set the smaller support vessels to escort/guard the larger ones. Right now the 'formation's don't seem to have much effect except on individual ship performance. Being able to layout your fleet before the battle starts and have a default set up for each fleet would be a really nice option (go play Gratuitous space battles if you want to see what I mean).

Diplomatic Options: There are some obvious options that were in MoO and/or MoO2 that weren't included for some reason.
- Ability to refuse an ambassador (they can refuse you, but you can't do the same).
- Ability to know when an ambassador is making a deal with an enemy civ (again, the AI does)
- We can ask that civs declare war, but there should also be an option to demand/request that they cease hostilities.

Once the Galactic Council is formed, it should happen a little more frequently (I'm not sure what drives it, but it was 30 turns between 'meetings' in my last game).

I do enjoy the game and will continue playing....just want to provide feedback and suggestions.

Keep up the good work.