Actionable Feedback for the First 30 Minutes

I agree with most of your points here. I'll go into detail below.

To start with, I didn't feel the urgency of the mission, until I accidentally hit Earth flying away from the station and the commander gives a snippy retort about me not doing the obviously important mission right away. I would agree to changing the background to a Red Alert sort of setting where it's obvious this is a huge deal.

Landing Zones : I'm ok with the way this works, and how landing in general works. I'm hoping for a tech that allows for different landing zones at some point though, so that it makes resource collection not such a pain when it's on the other side of the planet from the landing zone.

Resources : I agree that minerals should be on the ground, gaseous ones can be above. I'm seeing underground resources spawn, which sometimes I can't pick up. Most of the time I can circle around and eventually pick them up, but it's difficult as you can't actually even see them. Roving around on the planets is very fun. Jumping is fun. Missing resources mid-jump is not fun.

Lander Destruction : Via landing or other means needs to be a bit more clear, the sound for losing crew a bit louder, and a screen flash or some other big indicator that you're killing people.

Solar System : Fine with the way it is, not going to bother me if it changes. Camera changes shown on Friday afternoon/evening look very good and will go a long way to making this a better experience to navigate in.

Tywom meeting : Totally good, like the voice acting, like the dialog, like the feel of this critter. Background/filler material definitely needed eventually.

Solar System Music : I recall this being somewhat ... ghostly in UQM, with that sense of loneliness. I would get behind this sort of music if there are no other ships obvious in the system. With other ships, especially enemy ships, the music should have more of an edge. Friendly systems should have an upbeat sort of tune.

Resource Pickup : Allowing partial pickup. Scale down the icon for the resource based on the amount.

Combat : I recall seeing RU collected at the end of combat.

Starting ship : I'd like to see it look more patchwork than it is. I'm not sure about the combat agility and such needing to be changed, but you could change the ship's agility in the system/hyperspace map a little. Also, in combat, point defense is not available, even though it is shown as installed on the ship.

Lexite : I like the alternative route to getting the laser cannon on the lander.

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Overall - This feels VERY similar to SC2, which could be good or bad. I'm inclined to good at the moment. The Tywom are just close enough and different enough to the Spathi to be a good fit. I'd like to see a few more moons added. Cool to include Artemis & stuff there. I never attacked the robots to approach the site, but it sounds like it's well done. The arrow pointing to Triton should be a bit more angled, perhaps a different color, and perhaps pulsing or color shifting to draw attention. It wasn't clear where I was supposed to be going, and the orange color blended in to the UI too much.

Future stuff : Not sure if I'd prefer a tech tree that you can invest in, or treat it more like SC2/UQM. I'm torn. Something needs to use the Scroll Wheel on a mouse, either zooming or some kind of action selection in lander, solar system, docked, communication mode. Button mapping will need to be explored, and I would like to be able to use the keypad and/or WASD instead of strictly the arrow buttons for navigation and other things.

I agree strongly with this sentiment.  Another thought to go along with this... right now although the urgency is missing, the order of events is essentially identical to SC2:  visit space station, find slug-like alien on outer planet, encounter enemy probe, collect materials & revisit space station, battle enemy ship, etc.

I realize that it's probably too close to release to make major changes to this at this point, but how about changing the order? Start with the enemy probe encounter. That could set off the alert and the sense of urgency that's lacking right now. Imagine how everyone would respond if our very first encounter with alien life was a probe informing us that our race's destruction was imminent! Then when the Scryve vessel appears, we could be fighting it when the Tywom show up and save us (getting their ship blasted to the surface of Triton in the process, essentially a double-KO). This would also help us avoid the sense that our ship is better than it is, since we wouldn't be able to defeat the Scryve on our own! We could still fight the first battle with a much slower, weaker ship without dying and having to worry that our game was over before it had really begun.

1. Zoom problem. I think you got ship/planet scaling pretty spot on. The rest not so much. From what you told me, I think it's too complicated. Here's what I propose instead:

a) Default star system view - Extents of the star system. Always, even after returning from a planet. There's literally nothing to look at at high zoom levels. Not in the version I played at least. I'd rather see the star system in all its glory than mundane textures of planets. Another argument to be zoomed out by default is when you leave a planet and if you're not zoomed out, you'll never gonna see an enemy coming at you or have enough time to react when you do.

b) In this zoomed out view, my ship can be off-center. I generally prefer to have my ship/lander in the center of my screen for the reasons of that I always wanna know if anyone is approaching me from behind, chasing me and I prefer to be aware of my surroundings at all times since I expect to be fleeing at some point from an unbeatable enemy. However you decide to handle zooming+panning - make sure my ship doesn't leave a center 3rd of the screen (if you divide your screen horizontally and vertically in 3 equal strips getting 9 tiles total, a center tile is where I want my ship to be at all times at, except for the cases when you're on the outskirts of the system).

c) How zooming in works: As soon as you press Acceleration - check for your ship's movement vector (you already have it, as I understand, to auto-show planet's name). If it crosses any planet, check for distance. If the distance is greater or equal than "far" then do nothing. If that distance is less than "far" - start zooming into your ship and the planet centering two on the screen. The zoom speed should directly relate to your ship's speed (if your ship is flying slow - zoom in slow, if you've upgraded your ship to the gills and it's FTL'ing to planet - zoom in accordingly fast). If you turn your ship and your movement vector now misses a planet - zoom out back into star system extent view. If you stop - zoom out into system extents. It will obviously create situations where you can be super close to a planet and completely zoomed out. The solution is pretty easy. Tie your ship to planet distance with zoom level. As soon as you start moving towards said planet - zoom in fairly fast to the said level and continue zooming in according to your ship's speed.

You're basically tied to zoomed out view with a rubber band and you stretch it as you move towards a planet. If you're moving between planets - you're flying in a completely zoomed out view. Make zooming out "elastic", where it's fast at start and progressively slows down as it nears full zoom out level.

2. Lander problem. I really feel that lander should always point forward. This way aiming and shooting is tons easier. Right now it feels super loose and unintuitive. I'd understand if you wanted to show off your lander to the player, but really, SCO lander in nothing to write home about looks wise. Also, make scroll wheel zoom (I don't care if 1, 2, 3, 4 are kept for zoom). It just makes sense.

3. Get rid of Launch button in planet orbit view. It's totally redundant. Launch your lander by clicking or double clicking on landing spot on the planet. I don't need to move my mouse over to a huge ass button to launch my lander. One click to select the landing spot, second click on selected landing spot to launch lander. Right click to leave orbit. No need for any on screen buttons.

4. Traveling between planets in Sol system is painstakingly slow. If it's intended and there are upgraded interplanetary thrusters, that's fine. Turning seems OP to begin with though.

5. Gray out used dialog options.

I'm just gonna briefly mention my take on "irrelevant" things I didn't like, so nobody can say: "Well, why didn't you say it earlier when it could've been changed?" in case it somehow could.

1. "Tutorial" is more boring than SC2 "tutorial". It's a fetch quest, minus sense of urgency (which SC2 had with all the red disco lights and rave music at the station). Cuore is right, you're venturing onto meeting your first extraterrestrial sapient creature and nothing in the game indicates the magnitude of that moment. That does not put me into SC mood at all. Time to destroy Mars again?...

2. And the following quest is to go talk to the other slug guy?... I mean, could it get more boring?.. SC2 didn't have it better either. I need couple of side quests given by Wymdoo or Commander that lead outside the Sol to spice things up somehow. Maybe Wymdoo wants to pick up his favorite pink dildo from the neighboring star system or Commander wants to take soil samples from some planets outside Sol. I don't know, something...

3. Writing is mediocre if not dull. I mean what is this tautology? The least that could've been done is use of the savageness synonym, like barbarity.

The lightheartedness in those tutorial dialogs are way too off the charts. "But otherwise it's safe to die?" What starship captain talks like that? Is there any serious writing in SCO?.. Who wants to role-play a clown?

4. Low res SFX look cheap. Like those asterisk flakes Cuore mentioned. The game lacks ambiance just like Cuore mentioned in space sounds, space objects like asteroids, comets, nice SFX in star systems etc.

I've updated my original post, since some of it was not actionable. Also clarified TL:DR aspect of it.

I sign under everything Cuore said except [LEAVE ORBIT] button. Right click is enough (fading in and out notification about it is fine or make it a part of tutorial).

Suggestion: Before scanning for a landing zone, spin the planet to the energy signal's location, and visibly alert the player to the existence of these unidentified energy sources. At least point them out - these are the cool part!

I don't want that.  A text box on the left already tells you this and spinning the planet automatically wastes time if the player doesn't want to.

Not true - the planet sits there while it's "scanning". A little bar fills up while the player is waiting and can't do anything, that says, "Scanning". Instead of spinning and looking at nothing while "scanning" bar fills up, it could be spinning to Energy Signals first. It would actually be LESS of a waste. See what I mean?

^ I suspect it's just loading assets at the time of "scanning". 

Would be also nice to mark already read text in grey...

intercepting The Tywom ship 3 times, on 3d interception he started the dialogue from the beginning like it was our first meeting.

I see.  Sounds good!

Something in the middle then. When you click on the landing zone button/thing it rotates the planet to the landing zone. How about if clicking on the anomaly notification text it rotated the planet to the anomaly? 

I had the original SC2 on 3DO back in the day, loved it, have never stopped loving it. So I was thrilled to get to play SCO.

My comments:

I love the humor shown so far. It's making me genuinely laugh out loud. I didn't expect to love Wymdoo as comic relief but I do. He's absolutely great. So is the other Tywom captain.

Love the music (I recognized the Hyperspace theme immediately, my favorite SC2 track) but there do need to be some ambient space noises. If there are any, I'm missing them. SC2 had gurgles and odd noises going on that might be from your ship, might be from space... it was echo-y and lonely.

Since this was the demo/tutorial I really expected the game would tell me which buttons to use for what, when I first did something new. (like, "here's how you zoom in and out with the lander camera, here's how you jump" and so on). When I got into the ship combat, I was navigating with the arrow keys instead of WASD, and pressing every button possible trying to find out how to shoot. 

(On that note: Please make optional alternate keys for scroll wheels. I can't use a mouse because of wrist pain, so I use a trackball or other devices, and the ones I have don't have scroll wheels. If the only option for something is "scroll wheel" it's not usable to me as a player. I know this would apply to only a small percentage of players, but we are here! So that's a definite "nice to have" if it's possible. Or a remapping option.)

After I survived ship combat despite myself, I went into the Options screen to look at the controls, but I really expected the tutorial to handhold me. So many do! I don't know whether this is good or bad that SCO expects you to already know, or to look at the controls/options page, before you play the game. Some games do display controls layouts before the game itself starts, so maybe that's a better way to go?

There are some typos, which need to be fixed: "claminess" for one. This is pretty basic spellcheck stuff. 

Captain's Log etc: the light text on dark backgrounds is eyestrain-inducing. I went into the log to see if I'd visited a location already or not and it's actually difficult to read. Perhaps because it comes across as "wall of text". The blue keywords do help. The orange text and planet scan information was just fine, though. 

The upper left corner with Crew/Fuel/Capacity: the numbers are small and hard to read. (Screen resolution 1920x1200) I know you don't want them to be intrusive, but us original SC2 players have older eyes now. 

I had a blast just tooling around the solar system mining every moon and planet I could, and investigating the ones I couldn't mine. But some of the resources are apparently in-ground? Do I need lasers or drills? Again, nothing to indicate that, and I too had the problem of "why can't I pick up resources?" since there wasn't any notification other than a small noise that I had reached capacity.

When I finally got back to Starbase and the commander reminded me to get on with the mission... heh! In some other games it doesn't matter how long you take to get going. But isn't she kind of young for a commander? No, the bleached white locks in front don't make her look older or experienced, just that Star Control doesn't care about its' members hair colors. But seriously, the commander doesn't have an air of authority or gravity that I'd expect from such a rank... on the other hand, this game has shown it's more about fun and humor, so maybe I'm overthinking it. But she seems young to be commander of an entire space station and high enough rank to boss around the Vindicator captain.

I didn't see anywhere I could enter a character name for myself. Maybe this is intentional, or maybe I couldn't find it? I didn't see anything under "Controls". For that matter, "Controls" notes that (for example) Space is used for lander jump and to skip ahead in dialog. But I also used it to get to the ship/fleet/captain's log page and then to get back out. 

While seeing the old SC2 races sounds nice, I'm also happy to see who else is new out there to meet. If they're written as well as the Tywom then I'm really looking forward to seeing some new faces! (Carapaces? Exoskeletons? You get the idea.)

Galaxy Map: I couldn't figure out how to zoom. There weren't any scroll bars and no indication of how to zoom in on part of the map. Is a scroll wheel needed for this? 

The loading screen showing the Tywom ship before I'd even met them... that was confusing. 

Will there be a way to search the captain's log, or make notes about "come back to this place" or "need neutronium" or the like? Or will we have to do that ourselves the old fashioned way? (a Notepad file or a real notepad and pen) I can already see where I might say, Hey, didn't I need something for that one place in Such-and-such system... would love to "bookmark" certain planets so I can easily look them up again.

The gas giants and space are beautiful. I won't deny, the planets/moons are on the lumpy side, but I can suspend my disbelief on that. The weather, geysers, and other phenomena while you're driving around in your lander make it really fun to just harvest resources. I could probably spend some sandbox time just harvesting, it was that fun.

On the Planet Scanning screen, is there a way to auto-rotate the planet to meet up with the landing zone? Right now I have to right click and drag it around. I'm okay with the planet spinning while you're not doing anything, and being able to turn it to look for resources and interesting stuff. But it's another "nice to have" to auto-rotate the planet with one click so you can do your landing.

Overall though I'm very happy to see this game coming to fruition, and I can't wait to show it off to my friends when it releases, who already dealt with me being a giant nerd over SC2 for so many years. 

Also: Thank you for leaving the Captain's dialog as text only. I can picture it sounding however I want.