Thus far I have only been able to play for about 5 hours, but here are my basic impressions so far.
Firstly, I want to say that the combat is very enjoyable. I love the overall concept and the punishment for being reckless. The only downside is that the automatic energy distribution seems to be a little wonky. I'll be in a huge group of enemies and it will divert all my power to weapons.
The main issue I have had with the game is that I am having a hard time comprehending my overall effect on the game. The races who I originally allied with (the Evucks) and try to help seems to be losing in technology, power and well-being to my "starting enemy" race, the Acutians. I am fairly certain that this is due to my mismanaging their resources, however I don't know how to appropriately improve my gameplay based on the current instructions. On the other hand, it could be that the Acutians are naturally more militant? This may just be a "necessary evil" sort of thing with a political strategy game with this level of depth and I honestly don't have a good solution for it.
The second thing I noticed was that the quests were very powerful. I know they are still in development, but it seemed strange that the penalty for failing was the same is the penalty for not trying. I would like to think that the risk of taking a quest goes beyond that of "well my ship might blow up". Basically the idea of "not doing either option" in a quest doesn't seem like a real option to me, when I think that could create an interesting decision instead of just quest A or quest B.
Overall though, I'm very much enjoying the game and looking forward to actually learning how to effectively change the political landscape. Thanks for all your hard work.