Alright. Let me start off by saying that while I like strategy games, I don't play them often. So I'm pretty bad. Which means any complaints I have could just be because I'm bad. But after starting a game and playing for awhile, I figured I could do a first impressions kinda thing. I used Alpha15D. Everything here is my own opinion.
So, I started as Humans on Normal, on one of the Spiral galaxies, I think. There were two of the same type with three variants each if I recall correctly, I chose one of the three towards the bottom. Now, I don't know if this is intentional, but I feel like the game plays really slowly in the beginning. Nuclear engines and generators don't really work all that well for a proper military. And that would be fine, but I found if I wanted to leave my home world's solar system, while still allowing my Corvettes to have a decent amount of weaponry, I had to wait until impulse engines, the large 9x9 generator that I forget the name of, and fuel tanks mk. II.
And by the time that happened, I pissed off the Logans because some pirates attacked me right off the bat and when they told me they were pirates, I chose the option saying "Apology accepted, just don't let it happen again" and they got angry and flew off. Fast forward hundreds of years, and now they're allied with the Arians and demanded I give them my scientific oceanic planet. Having no military, because of aforementioned reasons, I agreed. Arians then captured the planet the Logan pirates were on, and then they both started extorting me for resources. Good teamwork, but I'm barely keeping up with their demands.
Haven't done enough combat to really comment on that, but regarding ship design, it kinda bothers me that it's misaligned. At first I thought the dots were the spacing, but it's actually the space in between them. And no matter what, it's always misaligned. But honestly, that's a really minor complaint. The system works, and that's all that really matters. Far better than not designing ships. The Corvettes feel really cramped. I think the main reason for that is fuel tanks take up a lot of space. To make it so that my Corvettes can travel across solar systems, I had to sacrifice radars. The Fighters are pretty good given their jobs, and I almost feel like Interceptors are almost too big. I managed to fit something like 3 or 4 missile traps in one of them, and put a radar in another. Though they have less firepower than fighters, so that might make up for it. Also feel like ship components should have tool tips like they do when you click on things to research them, but again, it's a minor thing.
Researching works well. I like the sheer amount of things there are. I like things. I like researching. Especially like how you can research multiple fields at the same time.
Diplomacy is odd, in my opinion. I don't really know how to increase people's opinion of you other than just giving them resources. Also don't know when I can and can't do something. Could just be me being bad.
The maps are cool. Kinda feels like a more in depth game of Risk, except you actually fight the battles. Definitely like the different shapes and sizes of the galaxies. The different types of planets are nice as well, kinda wish you could do something with gas giants though. But maybe it's better to have a type of planet that's useless.
All in all the game's good, and it's still in alpha. It's fun, and it seems like a lot of work was put into it. Hope you continue working on it!