I've been lurking for a really long time, but with the recent posts here and especially after reading your blog post (which I didn't know existed), I feel obligated to finally make an account and post.
First off, the blog post. I absolutely enjoyed reading it. Game design is such an interesting topic to me personally, and being given the chance to peer behind the veil is something I always appreciate. I like the look of the subfactions: the local pirates, the revolution pushing against their highly stratified society, the glorified and garish parade guards, and the people that you absolutely do not want to see show up on your doorstep. They all feel distinct from one another, except maybe the Herd, since they don't exist in the public build yet.
And that's the important thing: how it feels. You touched upon this multiple times both in forum posts and in the blog post, and in my experience that's something very important. When you see something new in a game like this, you ideally want to find out more. The game should make you want to find out more. In a game centred around starships shooting at each other until one of them blows up, a ship with a slick (or in some cases, garish...) colour scheme and a few special touches is definitely one way to hook people in.
I feel that you've done a good job so far with trying to make the subfactions feel different too. The Skytigers, being the nominally "elite" Magellan division, mainly hew to the same doctrine as the larger Magellan military, except their ships have a paintjob that nobody likes except for them. Judging by the lore, that seems to be a recurring theme for them as well. Meanwhile, the Blackcollars are the actual elite, the people that go out and actually do stuff. And I love how that's reflected in them mainly using lighter, faster ships, while still having muscle in the form of the BCR Porey. Speaking of BCR ships, my personal favourite BCR modification is actually the Yeager. The Blackcollars are definitely a faction that'd make good use of a small and quick stealth ship for troop insertions, which is still different from the other BCR modified ships that mostly add to their direct combat capabilities.
As for gameplay, well... I actually haven't gone for a Magellan playthrough in quite a while. Not since like, two patches ago? I recently got back in for a couple runs though, and my current one is nearing its end, so this looks like as good a time as any to give them another go.
