Finally had some time to sit down with D.A. and take it for a spin. Put together a bunch of custom races, set up a gigantic galaxy, and went at it. Then it crashed and couldn't get it to work again. So started over with a Huge galaxy. More fun was had, until my poor laptop, labouring under the strain, gave up once again.

Now playing a large galaxy and everything seems fine. Only playing at Painfull and I've got to say, I'm well surprised. Started off strong with a custom race in a randomly populated galaxy that ended up being filled with mostly Good races, except for the Krynn and an unfortunate Korath stuck right in the middle. Quickly expanded, seized a bunch of good planets, and started to develop and create trade links and soon, alliances. Had everyone linked up except for the Krynn and Korath and victory seemed inevitable. Easy, I thought.

Then one race flipped to evil. And some idiot declared war. Alliances were upheld, and in true WWI fashion--all hell broke loose across the galaxy. My remaining allies began to crumble, other races were decimated, and the Altarians, benefiting from some surrenders, have begun to dominate.

They slashed through my fleets; I produced a new line of ships with high defence against their mass drivers, and enjoyed some impressive victories--briefly, before their next generation ships started to dominate once again. At this point defeat now seems inevitable, and as much as I hate to lose... yeah, I'm impressed.

Problems and fixes?
1. Well, I wish I could've played those huge/gigantic games. The different planet types only really made a difference in the larger games; large and smaller, it seems I can mostly ignore the extreme colonization tech branch. The game ran fine until I quit--when I tried to reload it crashed to desktop every time. I figured my laptop was simply to weak to handle it.

2. Typos. Yes, I'm a pedant. But c'mon, nothing makes a game seem more unpolished that weirdly placed full stops, strange indents and bad spelling. This game is simply too good to have something so minor slip through.

3. Starbases. They're still kinda useless, no? Why can't I make a fleet with them, so that they're defended? Why does it take so many modules to produce something that remains so weak? And so few HP... I've given up on them.

4. Creating custom races is fun--but they seem underpowered compared to the game races. And why can't some skills--like miniturization or logistics--be accessed? It would also be nice to know exactly what those Super Abilities do--what exactly are the bonuses of Super Hive, for example? And finally--when assigning behaviour to a race, it'd be nice to know what it really means to give them an Iconian personality, or Drengin (and nice if their text didn't show up at the beginning of the game.)

But these complaints are minor (other than the first one--I'd love to play a properly epic game on Gigantic but have never been able to); excellent game, and well done! Looking forward to the next update and the changes it'll bring.