Here's a description of my current game:

Started on a circular galaxy playing as the United Empire for a conquest win against 5 other races at normal difficulty.  Found myself adjacent to the Horatio but with no connection to their systems.  Did the early game exploration, colonization and research.  Found the game is much more stable and does not slow down as much as before.  Beat the occasional pirate ship that appeared.  Finally decided to go to was with the Horatio to continue expansion.  No sign of other major races.  Took a while to eliminate the Horatio because they kept surrendering.  Still no other races.  It seems this game does not have as many systems connected as before, kind of like archipelagos.  Sending probes out all over the place found nothing.  Did find something odd with game saves though.  Let's say I had a prior save at turn 35 and overwrite it at turn 50.  Checking load save would show the save still at turn 35.  Disconcerting. However, when I restarted the game I could continue the saved game at turn 50.  

Between wars with the Horatio, I beefed up my systems and researched.  I REALLY HATE THE NEW RESEARCH WHEEL.  It gives minimal information on the new techs.  This is particularly annoying with ship hulls.  It should at least tell you what kind of hull you're considering, especially since you'll get locked out of another.  Liked the original tech tree much better.   

Finally wiped out the Horatio and still no other races.  Even the pirates seemed to have left.  Hit a glitch with the battle view.  Occasionally the battle view screen would not display.  Instead, I would get my galaxy view grayed out with only faint white displays of circles around systems and paths between them.  I can hear the battle playing out and finally get the results like Decisive Win with the quit battle option.  Quitting the battle brings up the battle results screen as normal.  Everything plays as normal thereafter.  

With nothing else to do, I spent a bunch of turns building up the conquered Horatio systems and sending probes out to find nothing.  By now, I'm building battleships and carriers.  What's with carriers anyway? What do they carry?  At the start of a battle there's a nice animation of what looks like hangar bays dropping out of the bottom of my carriers but nothing on them.  Will fighters be included in a later update?  

OK, by now I own 20% of the galaxy and still no sign of the other races.  There's an odd small yellow circle just outside my influence perimeter toward another quadrant of the galaxy.  Zooming in just shows a yellow circle.  As my influence expands, it eventually engulfs the circle which disappears.  Probes still not finding anything.  Suddenly, a Vodyani fleet appears out of nowhere above one of my systems close to the galaxy center.  Fortunately, I have two fleets there which just barely manage to eliminate that threat.  After converging other fleets on that system, I notice an odd, wormy looking line going from the system inward. Do we have wormholes?  I send an explorer on that path and ZIP! it's whisked into the center of the galaxy!  YES WE HAVE WORMHOLES!  Where have they been all this time!  Now I find another one at another of my systems.  It takes me all the way across the galaxy to a group of systems full of pirates and colonizable systems.  The pirates are mostly lone Prowlers with 9 attack strength.  There's an occasional fleet of three with one slightly heavier ship, but still no match for one of my battleships.  As others have noted, the pirates do not stack.  They swarm a system in singles and have to be knocked out one at a time.  Tedious and boring!  By now, around turn 80, I'm finding a slowdown in starting a battle between one of my fleets and a single pirate Prowler.  It takes almost a full minute from clicking the fight button to getting the battle layout screen and it grinds away some more after starting the battle to bring up the battle display.  It goes a little faster if I elect not to watch.  

So now I've found the Reavers home planet and, after clearing out the darned pirate pests, plan to hit the Reavers.  The Reavers seem to have nothing but small, low value ships like the pirates so that won't be so much fun.  Haven't found the Vodyani yet, but am looking forward to some interesting battles with them.

Most of the stuff you've talked about are glitches that I have experienced as well, but which will almost certainly be gone by release.

However, your problem with the tech tree is that you are not zoomed in. It definitely tells you what hull you are researching. In fact, my problem with the new tech tree was not a lack of info, but info overload. Transitioning between the two zoom levels and hovering the mouse over the mini-icons should be made more obvious for a newbie. Maybe a zoom +/- button right below the research queue.

Zenicetus wrote:

ajkrivo wrote:

However, your problem with the tech tree is that you are not zoomed in. It definitely tells you what hull you are researching. In fact, my problem with the new tech tree was not a lack of info, but info overload. Transitioning between the two zoom levels and hovering the mouse over the mini-icons should be made more obvious for a newbie. Maybe a zoom +/- button right below the research queue.

The tech wheel would also work a LOT better if there was a continuous zoom, instead of just two fixed viewing levels. It would be much easier to navigate with intermediate levels of zoom, and then you could drill down to individual techs for more info.

I actually disagree. Having two completely distinct options makes things easier to manage when viewing. It's not "Oh I can almost see, I'll zoom a bit further and damn, now everything is twice the size of the screen". It's just "See the tree" mode, and "See the info" mode. Just as it was in the first game.

The only real problem I have is late game war fatigue. Basically, even though I completely outmatch the AI, there is no way I can reject a truce more than twice in a row without my empire collapsing into eternal Anarchy.

It gets really old really fast when you have to chase a few pesky Vodyani arks around the galaxy because one single exploration ship of theirs keeps repairing them over and over again.