I've been following the development of the game for a while, so I had an idea of what to expect. Also, I've played Dwarf Fortress since it was 2D, so I'm used to having little-to-no tutorials, bugs, and somewhat inaccurate information. That said, I'm trying to approach it as the average player.
I did the quickstart, normal on everything. My impressions, in no particular order:
1. Smuggling spacefaring tech seems ludicrously easy and OP. I remember just flying through the turrets to the drop zone and warping out. For that, you get +50 relation and 10,000 credit.
2. There is no information on how to start the federation. With >50 relation with two races, I still can't seem to get either to start the federation with each other. At least the deal screen should explain what you need to get a federation going.
3. The little overlay indicators have no explanation. What does Medical do? What does Environment do? What does Public (dis)Order do, except anger half the solar system when it's at -100. And how does it even get that bad? (I may have destroyed a satellite or two of the Acutians in the first battle, but seriously?) Also, what do the various minerals do?
4. The Evucks, in my game, have 1hr30m+ time to spaceflight. Is this intended and they're just unlucky, or is there a bug?
5. I do like how the robot races have robot factories to make more of themselves. A nice touch.
6. In one massive battle between the Skylaxians, Andors and Thoraxians vs. the Acutians, pilots were dropping left and right. I had the idea to fly around, ignore all the bullets and collect those glowing escape pods, and ended up collecting over sixty pilots, and that was just one race. Less Space Batman and more Space Search and Rescue.
7. The Credit you gain from destroying ships is miniscule. Though, this might have been colored by having 20,000+ influence from smugging spacefaring tech.
8. I couldn't find any way to build outposts. None of the planets and the black market had obvious outpost-making abilities.
9. This may be just myself, but I tend to be overwhelmed by combinatorial exclusive options. With nine abilities (and four choices for each) I'm a little lost. All the options for planetary politics, on the other hand, are more self-explanatory.
I mean, how do I know that Weapon A is better than Weapon B? Compare this to figuring that blowing up ships is going to anger people and make other people happy, and building ships is going to make one people happy and make different people angry. It actually says specifically who is angered and happified.
10. Combat overall seems easy. I don't think I've taken hull damage yet.
11. When on an attack pirate convoy mission, either I missed the text or there was no text saying you could fly by freighters and raid them. I found out by accident when I tried, unsuccessfully, to destroy said freighter.
12. This is probably a bug, but when left power unset, it would always switch to full power to weapons, then switch back to the default.
I noticed a bunch of minor things, too, but those are more for Mantis than here.
(If I sound mostly critical, it's because I figure that's more useful than general praise. I had fun, generally speaking.)
