Alright, I've basically played through a whole game (~4.5 cycles). Have a 31.5k defense, size 7 (and growing) jungle colony that is the top supplier for almost everything it produces (>150% accessibility), and 3 other colonies besides. I'm not even using any AI cores. (Well, one gamma on the 7's pop, but that hardly counts.) There's still some stuff I haven't done, but meh, no point besides doing it to do it.
On a side note, had fun exploring the fringe with an Afflictor and 2 Harbingers - turns out Harbingers don't make half-bad phase tankers. With limited fuel and supplies, and the high cost of recovering CR, whether to storm glide or not was a real judgment call.
Colony feedback:
Vast ruins seems terribly powerful. Once I colonized the planet and got a tech mining industry up I basically never had to worry about money again. Tech mining in general just gives you everything right away. Supplies, fuel, and heavy machinery AND money, weapons, and blueprints!? Crazy!
I think the fuel is what makes tech mining so good. Metal, supplies, and heavy machinery on my world currently provide about 63k credits from exports, whereas fuel provides 57k credits. That's all just from the tech mining, there's no refinery, heavy industry, or fuel production on this world. And besides the income you can use the fuel yourself of course, which is a huge boon early on.
Moving on, [REDACTED] looks great, but I prefer the view unobstructed. Maybe make it blue for player colonies and way more transparent?
Light industry seems to have too high of an upkeep. With 150% accessibility, size 7, I'm only making like 37k credits off of domestic and luxury goods combined, but LI has an upkeep of 40k (50k after hazard).
The midline tier 1 orbital station seems much weaker than the low tech one. Didn't fight a high tech one for comparison, though. Didn't fight the other tiers enough to get a good judge on them, though it is clear the AI has no idea how to fight a station (big surprise
)
Getting away from colonies a bit, it still seems like there are a ton of frigates in every fleet. Related: when I was fiddling with my faction's doctrine the difference between size focus 4 and 5 was huge compared to 3 and 4.
Unlike Drakon, I like the new sale bar mechanism. Much more convenient and made perfect sense to me.
To end on a positive note, it's great to see lots of ships on the open markets. They were quite bare before.