So I was going through an initial single player game to look for bugs, testing, and other such things. 

First note: Some of the text windows seemed locked in size. Like everything is being crammed in to the same size space, so when a title is longer than one line it is being cut off. For example, the hilariously long name of the Kinetic Weapon research that gives your starbases the upgrade of 12 Kinetic Power and 1 (or 3?) Kinetic Defense. All I remember is the name has something with "You could throw stones at your enemies" and everything else was cut off. Not sure if a bug, or just hilarious filler text. Either way, might be an issue.

Second note: New way planets work is amazing.

Aside: Not sure if this is just me, but the techs seem almost too condensed. This might be because of the Alpha, but I liked seeing the tech tree in the older games. Or maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough? But how techs are laid out with different tiers in the same tech is also super cool.

Third Note: Mass upgrade system. I understand that sometimes you want to keep a lower tech building, but... I had to click through every planet and upgrade each building one at a time. Again, just an Alpha thing, or maybe something I didn't notice. But a mass upgrade for buildings/ships would be handy.

Then, the Drengins thought they were hot shit.

The Drengins colonized Mars, and as the Terrans, we were like. "..The hell, yo." So after making about 19 Railgun DeathBots, I took back Mars, and also took there capital. Take that! But there were much more grave consequences then we could have imagined...

As I finished the research to upgrade my wealth buildings, I was clicking through each planet (rather quickly) and upgrading the buildings. Tragedy struck, as the game crashed. I am unsure if I clicked something outside of the game, or what happened. All I know is that as I was upgrading my buildings, the game locked up and crashed. Will have to test again in the next galaxy, and hope the game doesn't take vengeful retribution on me by crashing after I wipe out the Drengins.

So game one? Much success! The flow and game play is smooth, flavor is still as incredible as ever, and there weren't many game play hiccups that come to mind as I write this. For future games, I hope to write up a bit of a "Captain's Log" style of post for every game, and post it in one thread for the other testers and the devs enjoyment.

So long for now, Space Emperors.