Heyo everyone and lurking devs,



So I've put some hours into this game and along with some others I know I've put together some feedback that I hope will help this game come together. Before I start, this game is one of the best 4x games I've played to date. It rivals Distant Worlds and GalCiv2 and it hasn't even reached beta yet. So I hope that my feedback doesn't come off as too critical or really negative, I'll include my positive feedback as well so that if feedback from alpha testers is taken into consideration it will let you guys know you're on the right track (at least in my humble opinion).



-Being in any state of diplomatic relations other than friendly or alliance seems to limit movement in the opposing faction's sphere of influence. Star lanes become blocked and I cannot traverse them. I would recommend changing that to allowing free movement in cold war states but with a relations hit if your ships remain in the sphere of influence at the end of the turn. There could be other ways of doing it, such as having a fleet of military ships of some proportion so as to be considered a threat to the players space you're inhabiting causing them to threaten you with war if you continue your presence or some sort of consequence. This isn't a huge deal with me personally but I know on the forums I frequent some people consider this feature to be so foreign to how 4x's operate that they believed it was a bug at first. Maybe allowing fleets to move through enemy/cold war systems that don't have fleets in them would work?



-I know this has probably been mentioned in this forum quite a few times, but I don't like that enemy fleets can bypass my own systems that have fleets stationed in them. I can understand the logic in allowing this to happen in a literal sense since space is pretty huge and all, but there should be some kind of station/base/system improvement that allows these fleets to be intercepted before they move on. I know this probably contradicts my above suggestion but this is only in situations where there are fleets or bases present in the system.



-There should be some way that we can determine how far a fleet can move before clicking on the destination



-It's very hard to progress through the game without being in a perpetual state of warfare. This is probably because of the AI still being a state of testing and not fully developed yet but one of the things I loved about GalCiv2 was that you could be wily or navigate the diplomatic waters deftly without devolving into World War Space at the end.



-The system and galaxy views are very static and "dead" without many moving parts. I would love to see planets with lights on them or stations orbiting my more developed colonies as they become more populated or industrialized.



-The UI is great and is so easy on the eyes! I don't care if stuff is buried in a menu because this stuff is so easy to look at!



-The battle system is amazing, the best of Civ and SoTS all rolled into one. I can't wait for "free look" or more camera angles in the next builds.



-Maps could be larger and a larger number of opponents could be chosen. But I do realize this could conflict with balance and overall design objectives so this is just a little preference of mine and isn't a big deal.



All in all, this is turning into a great game. Amplitude is charging far less than $60 for a game that provides much more entertainment than most full-price games. I wish you all the utmost success and hope this feedback helps. I'll put this in a feedback thread if I see one but otherwise here it is!