I like:
* Not having to manage science vessels, engineers, rebuilders, colony ships, scouts.
* Having a big mothership.
* Automated turret placement.
* Planets that have different amounts of science to give.
I badly wish:
* I could speed up the game or set it to fast ship speed mode. I'm sure it's in the works but damn waiting for ships to go places is like my least favourite thing to do.
I wish:
* It was easier to go and deal with the AI's threat. In AIW1 I could just send a fleet to where the threat is and kill it to free myself up to do something else. Maybe the AI is a bit "too smart" in this respect... The threat is slippery, I chase it from planet to planet and it gets away. The AI doesn't know I'm not trying to conquer the planet so it should stick around to defend it IMO. I'm not sure how to advance the game other than letting my planets become an "AI threat hotel" for them to take and stay at while I'm doing objectives.
* There was greater resource variety in the planets. Even planets that you would never want to capture made things in AIW1 more interesting. It is terrain, something you need to fly past to get to places. Maybe there is a planet with really great resources in a really inconvenient place. It makes for more ways emergent situations can happen.
* Along the same lines as the above, I wish power wasn't per-planet or the cap was higher with some other global cap for defenses similar to fuel for the fleet. It's a key element of strategy to be able to defend some planets better than others... The more valuable ones or the ones with important destructables on them.
* Speaking of destructables, I actually wish they were still a thing. I get that it can be frustrating to lose something that can't be replaced, but there was always more than one to find and they spawn again in the next new campaign anyway. Other than the human home base and the AI home bases, the destructables were the primary objective in AIW1 and with their loss it feels like there's not much I need to care about or defend, just my mothership and the enemy mothership. Everything else I can go and rebuild if and when I get around to it. They give you a reason to look into what the AI threat is up to and you have to take the AI threat seriously. Heck, I even wish the human command station was still a thing and the mothership didn't double as that.
