When do we get to start testing? I know we just started with this announcement, but, that's probably the question.
I need to get the anchor feature to a playable state before I'm comfortable talking about it publicly, and any decent "this is what this expansion will have, concretely" list has to talk about it publicly (at least generally), and we don't want to take preorders without giving a concrete feature list
So we don't know when it'll be open for testing. No more than a month from the original announcement; possibly significantly less. Will depend on how implementation goes and how many snags or "it works, but it's
nasty" issues come up, etc.
I'm kind of hoping for something that hits heavy armor
I'm not sure what you mean there; I mean, polarizers do more damage to high armor, but that's already in the game so I assume you mean something else?
maybe some damage over time or applied damage over time
We specifically talked about it when deciding on what bonus ship types to add, but DoT would really mess with the autotargeting logic (specifically, the "has this target already been overkilled once the shots land?" part of the logic) and the additional "cool" factor of DoTs doesn't rise to the level of our being willing to compromise how well fleets do without micro'd firing orders (in addition to various other pain the mechanic would involve).
Also, maybe some astro train improvements (wouldn't it be great if we could get on the train, and use it like a transport, alter the path, etc.). You know, go off the rails on the crazy… 
Haha, astro train improvements have been on my list for quite a while, but they wouldn't be paid-expansion material since it's just refining an existing feature. Whole new train types, perhaps, but until trains get some more general attention (and thus a wider group of people who
ever play with them on) that would be kind of unlikely.
Now my mind is just going off thinking of crazy stuff
Yea, that could be a recipe for disappointment
We've got some really cool stuff going into this, if I do say so myself, but there's no way we could make something that hits even 1% of the even-mostly-sane ideas y'all could think of in half an hour
And what about music? Do we get new music?
Definitely new music
The giant ships, the spire is going to get jealous. 
Iirc even that huge human ship is less than a quarter the size of a Spire DN or SD. As you saw we're working on some big, powerful stuff, but the Spire SD and AI Mothership are about as big and bad as individual units can really be within the game's context; we're going in a different direction with these
Maybe rework some of the gui menus (they are growing out of control). Improvements to the references page. Output showing what options we chose for a game to make action reports easier as well as load other people's set up.
That's all in the free-DLC category; specifics on the gui and reference pages things would be good when I have time, and some kind of setup-output is something I'll put on my standing list.
*Exhale*
I'm quite confident you'll enjoy it, but don't put too much effort into guessing what we've been working on
Though it certainly didn't come out of a vacuum; as with FS I'm trying to scratch a bunch of longstanding itches all in one go, and I wouldn't have known about them without the months/years of feedback.
