Hello and thanks for reading :)

This is a collection of feedback based on 1.3 version of Early Access ES2

Hopefully some devs find it useful

Global UI

- "Enter" button not supported. In all game menus popping up with confirmations, hitting the "Enter" button does not select "Confirm", have to click into it

- I can Alt-click to insert research on top of the queue, but I cannot do this for production

- On global overview, clicking on a system zooms into the 1st planet of the system, so you have zoom back out all the time to see what the system is about. Would be much more useful to zoom into system overview, and zoom into specific planets only when players keep zooming.

Ship Designer

- In Ship Designer, Shields total is not displayed for ships

- Shields are also not explained, how they work and what differentiates them from adding more health

- In Ship Designer it is not explained that armor and shields actually give additional combat tactic options (like "+25% health restored in the end of combat" tactic only available if you fit any armor on your ships)

Space Battle

- Some declaration or display of current phase would be nice, as in ES1 where it clearly said "Long/Medium/Short stage"

- I find myself clicking "Skip to action" button every time, perhaps this should be an "on/off" option instead

- I find myself clicking "Data" button every time, and even then it is hard to see what is going on with ships. A statistical display of all ships health somewhere in the corner like in ES1 would be most appreciated

- Shields HP are not displayed/distinguished, I am not even sure my shields are working...

- With spread fire/guillotine/nosebreaker tactics gone, I have no idea how to tell my ships where to concentrate fire

- I have no idea how to tell my hero not to charge forward and to stay behind the fleet

- Some sort of combat log would be nice to see battle stages/hits/crits/misses, would at least give some info if your fits are working or not. Or, well, some sort of post-battle stats, like in Stellaris.

Ground invasion

- An option to cancel ground invasion when you see you are facing insane odds would be nice. Right now it is do or die

- Some display of projected troop casualties based on your tactic selection would be nice. Right now I have to empyrically guess what the selected card will do.

Global balancing

- Influence ranges are ways too heavy

On Endless difficulty it seems everyone and their grandmother have better influence range than me, especially when I play as Cravers. 

I don't have my influence even in my capital, instead I have Sophon's influence from another star cluster in another spiral arm half galaxy away. 

This often results in weird fleet lockups, when I cannot move in my own territory because I need to ask AI for open borders. Of course, AI hates my guts and will never give it.

I have to declare war on everything that moves to simply be able to move my ships. This becomes even more annoying when AI forces truce on you, effectively locking my ships in place for 10 turns.

This does not seem to be working properly at all.

- Cannot convert production by default

Having to research special techs to convert production into science/dust seems too restrictive, since you have to actually put time to research it, and some of these techs are in era II even

This results in "uh, you must build SOMETHING" situations, when some systems are too bad at producing anything, or too far away to build ships and deliver them when I need those, and yet I have to pick something to produce all the time.

And I honestly cannot see myself researching those techs just for the sake of conversion because I have a huge backlog list of techs I really need to keep going, like more colonization/military techs and so on.

It definitely could use some looking into balance-wise. ES1 had them available by default and it worked just fine. At the very least these techs should be in era I, and cheap.

- Forced truce... again

I think enough was said about how annoying this mechanic is to players. Both these forums and Steam forums are full of it, so I hope you have something up your sleeve to fix this.

This mechanic is obnoxious. It has some logic behind it, but the implementation needs work so it is not as annoying and repetitive.

At the very least it must give open borders by default, so the player can actually move their fleets and not getting stuck for 10 turns God knows where inside enemy influence zone after being force-truced.

- Fleet Admiral experience gain vs Governor is too low

So. if we take 2 heroes - the one you get on start, and the one you get later on.

1st one put into homeworld as a Governor keeps gaining steady XP with every building, and around level 7 by midgame (Era II)

2nd one I get on level 3 right away, assign to fleet and go on murder rampage - I plow through half of known galaxy with him, kill God knows how many ships from other 3 empires, literally a fight every turn, take over Sophons capital... and he is level 5.

Something seems off here, if anything, Fleet admiral XP needs boosting or Governor needs nerfing.

- Harassment by exploration ships. Every scout ship puts "invasion" debuff on systems

Like, every little cockroach explorer ship AI keeps sending my way is considered to "invade" my systems and sap manpower as they fly by.

Considering that AI loves spamming those scout ships like there is no tomorrow, quite annoying.

I mean, if they would put this production into combat ships, I would be worried, but right now it feels lame, I feel like I am swatting fruit flies and not actually fighting.

I would also love to see some sort of orbital defense station like in Master of Orion, so that enemy cannot just harass your "super-powerful" systems with 1 explorer.

Like Vodyani stealing pops from my system in backside of the galaxy, so I am forced to have at least 1 ship in orbit everywhere to stop this crap.

It is annoying and not really doing anything besides annoyance.

- Not being able to block system from random passers by

So now, instead of how it worked in ES1, we can only stop ship for 1 turn in defended system.

That is quite annoying, considering AI loves to spam scouts and send them to harass you, they come from ALL empires, 2-3 per turn, and it is obviously not enough to slap them before they break free and keep running ahead into your controlled space.

It feels like my fleets are not defending/guarding anything.

I mean, if you want to pass - sure, but deal with my fleet who is guarding the system first.

In general, I would love to see this mechanic back as it was in ES1, where you cannot pass the system until the guarding fleet is down.

Or, at the very least, stop intruders for 2-3 turns and not just 1 turn.

- Nothing to do with Influence as Cravers

Since the war declarations are free with just the initial law, there is literally nothing else to do with the influence.

I had 1.5k influence stored by the end of last game, and not a single thing to spend it on, since most of my techs were focused on colonization/warfare to support Cravers playstyle.

Since diplomacy options and political games (because, why would you want anything other than Militarists, really?) have pretty much no meaning for them, Cravers need something else to spend influence on.

That would be all for now, thank you if you had patience to read through all this rant, and thank you for making this great game!