First reaction

100 percent agree about the research part. 

It needs to be done as in previous game, stuff that has some connection or logical progression needs to be obvious from the tree, grouped together and separated from the rest, as it is it looks chaotic, its difficult to read, its simply not good enough.

When you think about it, research trees are key component of the first game, its where all the difference between the factions lies, and its current form, i could not even tell if there are any new extra techs compared to Rebellion, that would change/improve gameplay in some new interesting way, cause its so hard to navigate.

Glad you like it so far! Just going to run down your list:

-How to create a fleet?  I can't keep selecting these ships to move in formation when I have 200 in a battle. 

Put the ships into a control group (select -> ctrl+(number)) and/or select and pin to the bookmark bar.

-Love the UI style, but it is large, clunky, and with no colorful buttons (like red for attack) make it harder to quickly remember which to click.  Also don't like how the UI is not transparent or dark like Sins1, that went better with space, but I otherwise like it.

Pasting from Discord from our art director: 

-In all games, think Civ, Sins1, I like a tech tree to see where I am going.  I don't like list views like it is now.  Fine with tabs for differing things tho to clean it up, sins 1 was perfect.

 

The full research tree system isn't in yet (that's why there's a pink space pony on that screen that says Under Construction).

-Can I take ships in and out of the garrison, and can I restrict them to the gravity well, etc?  I don't like them darting off without orders or warning and getting killed.  Otherwise love the garrison idea.

You can order them within 1 gravity well of their home. Garrison ships don't consume resources or fleet supply; and replenish automatically from idle factories.

-LOVE the asymmetric gravity wells due to asteroid configs, etc.

-So glad to see this, I have been playing Sins 1 and one day I thought "wonder if they will ever make a sins2, let me google it" and what a surprise I got!

This seems like a decent thread to continue on.

My first impressions after 1 game completed.

I agree on the research part, it is hard to get a decent overview of the "paths" to take. Also the fact that you do 1 at a time shared all trees makes tech progression feel a lot slower than it was in Sins 1. Looking forward to see what you do with the system as i'm not that big a fan of it, yet.

Combat seems much quicker than in sins 1, while getting going in the early game feels much slower, kinda an odd combination.

I feel the UI looks a bit iffy, i like that it is generally simple, but i'm not entirely sure what it is, maybe the colors or icons something just irks me a tiny bit(really just a tiny bit), will see if i can find the right words to explain it.

I was pleasantly surprised with most of the models, as i wasn't a fan of the first models shown(slightly cartoonish, though some of it may have been the lighting), but with the exception of the heavy cruiser everything looks amazing (the heavy cruiser reminds me of what i design i space engineers, way too many(and too big) turrets on way too little space, kinda silly looking compared to the style of most of the other ships, i personally recommend you rethink the design).

I feel like we get way too many crystals/metals compared to credits, and that is as the TEC which by design get a lot of tech for extra credits, i would definately re-balance this, especially with the other races in mind.

I love the planet shifting so far, it definately caught me off guard a few times, and i only noticed the warning about a lane disappearing 1 time, maybe make it more visible / add a timer (or some other visual queue to show an estimate maybe, like colors/shading denoting how stable the lane currently is?)

I love the customization options for capital ships, gonna need to play around with it some more on my second playthrough.

Now for the bugs and technical parts:

I have a pretty decent PC: 

Windows 11

12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900K   3.20 GHz

32gb ram ddr 5

Nvidia RTX 2070

I have had 0 stuttering, hanging, lag or what you wanna call it. I did have 3 crashes today, though that was before you added the patch and it was late game-ish, but reloaded the latest auto-save got me past the points until the next crash.

I have had 0 UI/coloring issues, i think, it matches what i have seen from others.

The engine handles moving fleets of 2000 supply better than Sins 1 handled moving fleets of 50 supply(tiny overstatement perhaps, but not much).

I had some issue with capital ships getting stuck on new stations in gravity wells(build a trade/science station while fleet is moving across the system) when trying to jump the fleet to the next stellar object/planet/system. Solution was to manually take the stuck ship around, which made the waiting ships jump without it.

It felt like sometimes the PD turrets weren't active/responding to incoming missiles despite them seeming to have a clear line of fire (Akkan).

All In All, The game is surprisingly fun considering the early stage and most of the stuff you advertized is amazing. A lot of stuff that drags the game down, is related to assets not having been added yet or updated yet.

PS: won't touch balance yet as that should probably go by the multiplayer lobbies for a few weeks, and nothing is noticeably op, bar fully decked out capital ships.