Bugs and small suggestions
I often have the game's sound turned low or off while I listen to something else in the background, but the shipyard anchor and unanchor sounds always play at full volume.
The "very slow" options for game and research speed aren't nearly as slow as I hoped for. Can we have options comparable to Civ V's marathon pace?
Sometimes when speaking with another race via the diplomacy menu their dialog just says "So". Doesn't seem intentional.
I like to design all the ships I use myself, and so I just about always filter my ship menu by "user". A few issues with this though - The "user" menu gets populated with some of the game's default ships anyway, and (so far as I've found) there's no way to replace the default support designs. Using a custom design for starbases' "request constructor" option would be pretty great. (As would a way to cancel such requests from the same menu.) Also, I'd like a way to set this as the default menu to always have selected when opening a ship menu.
I've had a much better experience with the game since playing against custom factions that have military as a much lower priority. I still end up at or near the bottom of the power rankings, but at least I'm not at war with everyone solely because my nonmilitary focus means I'm perceived as weak. Some less warlike default races would be a nice change/addition.
More robust in-game editor options for creating custom races would be great. I'd like to be able to specify my own color schemes instead of only choosing from such a limited set, and I'd like to be able to design my own ship styles from the edit race menu.
When the interface "draw grid" option is checked, the map is much too visually busy. But when it's unchecked it's not as easy as I'd like to discern which parts of the map belong to whom. I'd like more options in this area, such a less opaque grid and/or borders that are still distinct when the map is zoomed out.