While I'll be posting mine here, as more and more people get access maybe we should complie some impressions here so the devs have a single spot to look at first time feedback (since that often indicates at the very least learning curve issues).

Spiral 4 galaxy, 5 opponents (one of each race, screw you default trying to give me 2 cravers)

Lumeris, 75 turns.

Pre thought- everything is fucking beatiful.  Hell even the ground combat exceeded my expectations (i practically squealed when i saw the samurai birds with their unique attack animations and realized EVERYONE had one).  Ships look great, menus look great, etc.  Only thing I didn't really "get" instantly or take the time to learn was elections because I sorta didn't care.

First thing I didn't realize was that probing planets gave you the "explored ruins" like bonuses from EL.  I sorta don't like this as probe management becomes EXPLORE EVERYTHING for the bonuses, while you just wait for cd's or new scouts to be built.  The core idea is fine, but I'd almost rather only some explorations give rewards (indicated on the UI) so you can decide to do those, while hoarding your probes otherwise (not that the lumeris don't already probe wonderfully...good sentence).

From there the lack of interaction with minor factions was sad, as was the lack of diplomacy in general since I had piles of gold and influence, and no where to spend it (the influence anyways).  I know this is coming later, but for right now lumeris feel odd.  May also be I spent turns in era 2 researching a tech that did nothing.

Further I hope planet flipping gets a look. Right now you can only sell colonies, but colonies only sell for a few dust (50ish) and cost 200+ to establish.  Again assuming this is future stuff, but want to be complete.

With that out of the way dear god was I swimming in dust.  Even with half the stuff not in yet I still felt like I was playing a totally unique race.  Stuff is EXPENSIVE, but I was sitting on 5k dust with almost 1k a turn before I even got trade route tech.

Mentioning tech, again i'm probably just bad, but I think lumeris seems awfully slow?  I was just into era 2 by the time I stopped playing (75 turns).  Then again boatloads of money and influence and not much to do with it.

Also on tech, it does feel better. Early on and not optomized, but having 2 things per tech + era system felt pretty good, and buildings in general had a LOT more impact, which was nice.  I still need to test, but I think it's a solid improvment over both EL/ES.

Ship design feels ok so far.  I'll need to look at it more, and try the support modules as I suspect that and mixed fleets are where the real gameplay is.   I do see the potential for depth that ES/EL games seldom have and in a system that's quick and intuitive to boot.  Might be the gold standard if you guys balance and give proper depth.

Lumeris start feels stupid fun, and I can't wait to optimize it.  I just ran scouts all around the place and bought everything I could. I  didn't really do my tech path perfectly for that, but in the future I can see them being crazy fast expanders and that's absolutely a good thing.  However I do worry that expansion is pretty damn hard.  Now I LIKE that. I thought it was way too easy to expanding in both EL and ES, and going wide is already super super strong, but I can see issues for other races when your 4th colony is already impossible to defend. I just didn't care when mine were invaded (or my minor factions) because I had so many.

Didn't really see how I was supposed to find some of the "off the path" planets.  I did see some, but I didn't feel the "don't need lanes" tech was worth it (one planet was gas giant the other was in sophon influence so I couldn't grab it )

Laws feel great, but do need some variety.  I get that they might have overlap so that you aren't totally screwed if a vote doesn't go the way you want, but right now I feel no need to really influence the election.

Trade looks potentially cool, but by the time I had the tech the universe was in full "kill everyone" mode so i couldn't get routes anywhere due to the aforementioned scattered empire issues.  I suspect this too will get better when diplomcay is a thing.

The new "truce' and terms for loss is interesting.  Is it just a certain number of turns or just something the AI can only force right now?  It could be an issue since I was seeing 60-70 dust per turn payments for a "loss" when I basically would just cede a colony.  I dunno if i could laugh those off because I was lumeris, or if those numbers still suck for other races.  That said overall I'm certain the mechanic is a good thing.

Bugs:

Only one I can think of was having two heroes on two fleets in teh same system, and then fighting the enemy.  The hero for fleet A showed up when I fought with fleet B.  No clue if it would've done it the other way around.

All in all i'm really really happy.  I'm sure i'll find more issues and what not, but this is a super solid framework already.  If the lumeris feel this unique with half their mechanics missing I can't wait to try out the other races.

Edit- after reading some more it seems like I'm one of the few players who was mostly fine with both happiness and money?  I basically never even bothered to track my happiness (mostly content when I did check) and was just rolling in cash.  I don't think I really over focused on happiness techs either.