After Taking a month off i'm going to go through the anniversary update to make observations of the current state of the game and make a list of idea's, and my thoughts on the new features here we go.
Starting Condiditons
·Galaxy and Star size is 700 / 6x6
·Ring Galaxy no centre
·I'll be playing Human's as I believe they would be most new player's choice.
·Standard Empire game mode
·Monarchy Government
·Planet With Moon
·Pre Warp
·Home System Excellent
·13 Maually generated Empires 1 of each race all excellent starting home system
·All Story Options on and Race victory conditions on.
·Spawn on edge of Galaxy
·Usually i would do manual ship design but i'd like to test the automated designs.
Requested features
·Option for Nebula Density to be "Off" with the exception of story nebula.
·More Colour options for Empires and dont link flag and colour together, This has been a community request for a LONG time now. It becomes about choosing your favorite colour instead of your favorite flag or vice versa.
·Option to reload map if starting position is undesirable without having to go all the way back to start new game menu.
·Save starting location setting when having to reload game after undesirable spawn location. (All other settings are saved but not this one?)
·Right click on current research button at top of screen to allow crash research without going into research tree.
·Ability to rename Home Star systems Star (without using game editor- new players arnt going to know to look there.)
·Population Policy, allow us to set a default policy for all future types of a particular planet type, maybe a whole screen dedicated to setting this with a list of all planet types and potential races. as it is when u get to later game and your picking up planets left right and center it can be difficult to keep track of whether the most effective races are populating/migrating to the correct planets.
·Search function in the research screen e.g i could search colony happiness or corruption and it would display available components that boost this.
·Still cant switch between pre-set automations and previous player made automation settings, would love a player made automation template for easy switch. for example going from my chosen settings to "rule in absence" then back to my previous settings after a few in game years. This games Automation is it's main attraction! being able to easily switch between player made settings is a must.
Thoughts on the new features:-
·The new Play Mode screen, Very nice, keeps it simple and gives a nice breakdown of current game modes, while teasing future content.
·Mininmum attack level for ships is set to 50%, Now i am but a simple man and so even after reading the tooltip i have no clue what this does. could be and probably is a me thing.
·The new Anniversary event was quite funny, made me laugh anyway and the artifact has some nice empire boosts too well done
.·I like the new Colour changes in text when a popup refers to specific building or troop on a planet, i would like to see this further expanded with an added tooltip that describes what these things are while hovering over the text, but its a nice step forward, again great job
.Issue's I ran into:
·1st & 2nd load in and I spawn in the outer galaxy ring on the inside with no reasonably close stars requires reload back to start new game screen for better starting location. (Save available if requested)
·When selecting and auto zooming into a select ship/fleet, Camera STILL zooms way to close and requires the player to zoom out to a manageable height. This was reported a LONG time ago also.
·When on the research screen and pressing the go-to categories on the right hand side for example Weapons it will some time take you somewhere completely different, hard to get a save of this in action because its seemingly random when it happens and pressing the category multiple time will usually take u to where u want to be eventually.
I stopped quite early into the game after realising that this document was going to get very large, I'll likely break it down to Early/Mid/Late. I'm also finding it hard to recognise what needs better UI and improvements because iv gotten used to knowing where thing are even though I know it was a long road to learn it and that for the most part a new player looking at ANY of this UI and understanding it is going to be hard.
That being said the above is My early game thoughts, some of which I have reported before and obviously been given a low priority. Let me say this though even a "low priority" problem that is left for so long can be a BIG turn away for existing players.
I love this game but even with my usual positive mindset towards the game and its progress, I am struggling to want to play right now and I think its largely impart to common reported request are just being passed over to make way for additional new content. I don't know how well funded the game is but if its not going to put the company at a loss u may want to hire an additional member to help with workload, Poor Elliot's fingertips are probably wearing away. But hey what do I know I am rambling now.
All that being said I recognise that the game has been improving slowly but surely, I just hope the audience hasn't already moved on by the time its "Finished".
and spawned on "Edge" 
