Just a quick note now that I'm into my first full week with SoaSE, It is great!! I am mostly a 'single player' player, and the days long games for the first few games has been interesting and great fun. It takes a little while to pick up on all the subtleties, the little plus and arrow stars on the empire map showing that a ship has updated. and the click center picture in the bottom menu to go directly to the ship or destination in question, but i'm working on getting it all down. But more than almost anything, the wonderful community of developers, players and modders here is outstanding, and the support they give is very nice. I haven't seen that much helpfulness and niceness in one place in awhile.
Anyway one quick question if I might, with regards to the bottom and top ui display bars, it would be wonderful if they were collapsable for a full 'clean' screen look, and re-sizable. I'm running 1900 x 1200 (approx i think) and the ui bar is still very large, it seems, maybe its just me and my quirkiness, but just wanted to see if that might be possible, or has already been done and I don't know about it. At only a week in, there is a ton I don't know.
Also, just as a last note, I tried my hand at modding a bit. I'm no coder, but from the examples given in the modset with the Forge Tools I boosted the hulls, shields, armor and weapons and weapons range for the advent (my favorite right now
) and tweaked the max linear speed for the scout.
I'm having great fun and not dying too much! 
Thanks to all the great people here, It's wonderful to be a part of this!
Take care,
-Teal