First update second play through on hard difficulty playing as United Empire.

Ok have condensed fixes and errors onto one page from two play throughs.  I5, AMD 290x 3 gig card, 8 gig ram.

Major fixes:

Empire management screen needs to show list of planets like in ES1.  You have planet list when assigning hero, but not in empire screen where it is very much needed.  We need to be able to find best planets for industry, dust etc.  

Empire management screen needs to have an expansion planner.  We need to find best suitable planets in systems that are close to our empire and quickly find unique planet types that have been discovered.

System buy out does not seem to work.  It lets you click buyout at cost 1000 I, but system still gets taken over (I am at war with Vodyani).  This may not be implemented yet?

Optimisation.  Still has unacceptable stuttering or freezing when moving across map or watching battles.  Tried fastest setting but make little to no difference.  

Upon exiting the screen to desktop menu screen freezes and does not return to windows.  I can not use task manager to close program, it looks like program has closed but menu screen has frozen.  I have to sign out of windows and re sign in to clear it.  This only does this when you go to desktop, not exiting to main menu.

Minor fixes:

Move end of battle notification away from centre of screen ( It is redundant anyway as battle summery says the same thing).  I like to watch my ships sail of into the void after they have obliterated a flotilla.  Also add an extra few seconds before screen returns to map.  It can feel a little rushed, after the battle.  

In battle view camera seems to go through meshes in some cases.  Maybe a little to close in flyby.  Could we get some camera angels showing top and bottom shots of the ships in flyby?

Planets with rings show a hideous line through centre of planet in discovery animation.

Independent options for ground and fleet battles.  I like to see the fleet battle but not the ground battle.  Having to set the watch button each time is frustrating.

Allow hero overview screen to both assign skills and assign hero to fleet or planet from the same screen.  

No beginning  of turn notification icon when system is taken over through influence.

Missing Icon when research completed for Mega Oceanography (Ultra IR Astronomy)

Basic Adsorptive Shielding text overlapping (Increased damage from weapons 12%)

Vodyani Ark has no engine sound in battle, this thing should be heard across the system.  Also when one explodes it needs to be massive, like Homeworld 2 mothership explosion, although technically they are not completely destroyed as they are reclaimable.

When attacking Arks with multiple fleets in system the Ark seems to repair itself after each engagement.  Repairs need to take place at end of turn.  In fact besieged system need to have repair option suspended or at least a penalty of  every two turns.)

Some times 3d battle environment fails to initialise.  Only happened once on this game.

General feelings:

Game plays well in first part.  No issues to note.

Second part of game 80 turns in.  Could do with continued exploration missions, or reasons to send out heavy patrol ships to outer galaxy.  One problem here is that once a player has closed his borders it is difficult to explore without starting a war.  Could use a diplomatic option that allows exploration only.  

Hero levelling needs balancing.  Governors level up much faster than fleet commanders.

Ai needs to put up a better fight during mid game.  Key nodes are not becoming the focus of battles.  AI should at this point of the game be making more aggressive fights over key map areas.  This could be improved if random generator places unique planets in choke node systems.  The fight over resource rich planets needs to be more focused and meaningful, unfortunately the market place is preventing the need for players to acquire  and defend systems with important ship building resources.  It is to easy to just buy them off the market place.  

Need to tighten up micromanagement.  Some screens will not let you do all that a player needs to do without exiting or using more mouse clicks than needs to.  Every redundant mouse click save on RSI.

Will not comment on end game until update 4 is finished.

Overall really enjoying playing game.  Would like to see special Titan ship classes that can only be built on unique planets (any excuse to see more fantastic ship designs).

Would like to be able to edit maps.  Can you provide tool to do this.  Procedure generated galaxies might work for multiplayer but single player no.  Tactical gameplay is all about the environment and careful placement of resources.  You need to provide the illusion of playing mini system skirmishes within the map.  I don't think a procedure map can do this to the extent of a hand crafted map.  It's all about geometry within geometry.  Preventing the map from looking the same all over, map locations that are unique to the players who inhabit them.  Worm hole hub points etc.