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[cytokine]

Some random feedback from a new player:

Commands in combat being more than suggestions. "Go there, right now, I really mean it". "Shoot at that big scary thing, not at the effing glimmer, right now".  Commands for formations, standing ground, hold missiles.

Having to remember to use salvage after looting research stations and the like. You go explore some neutron star for some blueprints, and then you, like, ...just blow it up? Salvaging after battles feels similarly redundant. What are you doing post--battle, if not salvaging? Then you repeat it again?
I find the Domain-era probes to be rather dull and repetitive. I swear, one probe can make five loot screens with just regular junk.

The map exploration overlay is very hard to read (https://imgur.com/a/ZtsstzU), the letters are too small (130% UI size not helping), the brackets make it cluttered, could differentiate based on color. Surveyed systems could be just a big gray X, without brackets. Unexplored systems could be a big white question mark or whatever. The symbols could enlarge as you zoom in, instead of staying small.

The bar quests are a bit too obtuse. Like a wall of text with some numbers highlighted. Would be nice with a "quest box" at the bottom, like the ones on your intel screen. I get why it's some person talking to you, but a summary at the bottom would be nice. Have the flavor text be for flavor, and not be in your way.

I've been using midline mostly, and Eagles being like sluggish Falcons, or like weaker Champions with bad mounts, get squeezed out. Needs something like medium missile mounts, or a fighter bay, or large ballistic mounts?

Speeding up combat really should be "vanilla".

Would be interesting to have more enemy ships in the simulator. Deploying your own ships as enemy ships would give the most control. Having access to Remnant ships in simulator after having defeated them once, would make it less tempting to resort to guides, and more exploratory.

At the Gates mission: I got hooked on the last half, but more characters talking to you, less describing subtle facial expressions would be preferable.

This game has been taking up all my free time the last few weeks, and look at me nitpicking. I just want to be helpful

[Aethelric]

I think these are generally pretty interesting criticisms! I want to focus on the salvaging one.

Salvaging after interacting with research stations and survey drones/ships does feel pretty rote in a non-rewarding way. I think it's one of those things that feels tuned for an extremely hypothetical "early-game explorer" playstyle, where you want to use your salvaging skills/gantries to really maximize returns on supplies and other goods; in practice, though, the player's power curve ramps up far too quickly for those to matter all that much. In practice, it just feels like a button you need to remember to press just on the off-chance there's another AI core or blueprint in the salvage remains.

Agreed that salvaging in that way also doesn't make much lore sense.. research stations and the like should probably just be given an "unexplored/explored" state and remain on the map rather than just inexplicably disappearing into a pile of trash you need to sift through. An interesting option might be to make the player actively choose to destroy the station to salvage the remnants, but that would require some purpose for an undestroyed station which obviously does not exist currently.

Salvaging after battles is, I think, a meaningful choice because salvaging as a separate action requires not having a hostile fleet tracking you. This runs into the same problem as before, though, where the player's power grows so quickly that there's a very limited window where there's a real gameplay impact.

[Toxo]

Some things that are on my list of changes I'd like to see:

Domain Artifacts should be valued by everyone - Don't allow players to break down domain nav buoys, sensor arrays or comms. Doing it to makeshift ones is fine, but this pristine tech should either be mapped and their locations being sold for good currency, or - if the owner isn't there to defend them / they are from a collapsed system - be towed and sold to a market, so someone else can get use out of them. In fact, players should be able to redeploy them at other stable locations, so we have a vanilla way of getting domain auxiliaries online in systems that previously didn't have them.

More story content - I really liked the academy questline, and would like to see more of it. And not just exploration themed ones, but war campaigns for the factions to help them achieve their endgame (dictate supremacy, ludd conversion, persian liberation, Tri Tachion allowing AI research and usage, and hegemony making contact with old earth while maintaining stability), story driven build up of a struggling system, helping a small independent faction to become a mayor player, or some pirate themed destabilization of the sector to turn it into a giant lootfest. There are endless possibilities, and instead of having just passive factions that will only raid each other occasionally, I want them to make use of the player to introduce some change to the sector. Especially exploring the origin of the [SUPER REDACTED] around the hypershunts.

The combat simulations in the refit screen could need an update - Namely a generator for faction fleets according to their observed fleet doctrines. So in the beginning it would just be core world factions that the play can choose from, and face a randomly generated fleet from them, but later on [REDACTED] and [SUPER REDACTED] should be simulated too, so you can test your loadout in a save environment, or have a non-consequential way to get a quick fix of this game's awesome combat. Bonus points if you can adjust their fleet size, too.