First off I really like what the recent patches have done, but there are a few frustrating issues that I think should be looked at. For one thing, I had a game where I had skylaxians and the owls in the federation, but they were behaving in a really stupid fashion. The skylaxians were in a war with the evuks and the acutians, the skylaxians had more poewr than both of them combined but they refused to protect their planet. The acutians were attacking the skylaxians main planet but the entire skylaxian fleet was trying to take over an evuk planet, making little progress. Eventually the skylaxian planet got wiped out because there was no one defending it, leading to a lost game. I'm just suggesting that you look into improving the ai a little bit, those kinds of things can be frustrating. My second point may be intended, but the species in the federation do not defend each other. In that same game the pelitians (or something like that) had a gigantic fleet, but wouldn't defend their allies. Creating a federation seems like it doesn't do much outside of the victory condition, they members do not act like they are part of a group. These are just a few issues I have seen, not gamebreaking but I think they could be improved.
