I played for the first time yesterday (after doing some suitable reading around, but otherwise never having played before), did about 12-ish hours. As these days I feel it especially important to leave some constructive feedback (or any feedback) to places, double-especially to people kind enough to be supplying free entertainment as their hobby, I figured I am obliged to make a few suggestions that stood out to me.
Bear in mind I say these 100% in the understanding that this is the dev's hobby, not his job and that I have no expectations that my suggestions will be acted on, but merely things that occured to me as I was playing. (It's possible some of this may already be there, that I just didn't fnd between the wiki and google searches; and I apologise if some of this is old hat - but I figured a completely fresh set of eyes sometimes finds things. I've had it myself with my own wargames rules!)
1) The biggest one, I think. A button or hot key for the shipyards screen. It surprised me there wasn't one, given how much it is used; I find ymsefl getting to it by research or mining or something and then tabbing over.
2) The ability to build conventional industry. Why? With what is new (from my understanding) to 2. 0, it is entirely possible to have a fairly slow game just bimbling around the solar system and doing thins with researching Trans-Neutonian technology. (I spent the entire day just doing that, actually). If building conventional industry (or some sort of pre-TNT project) was available, you could stay in the pre-FTL stage for longer (if, like, threas at things were turned off). I don't think I have ever seen a game in which the pre-FTL phase is so playable, so it seems kind of a shame not to be able to maximise that bit of potential.
3) In ship orders, I keenly felt the lack of a "Supply points at 40% or less" or something option like with the fuel, since I found that was the limiting factor and 20% was, well, largely too late. (Admittedly, that was because I did not know how severe not putting an engineering bay on was, but. . . )
4) I was (and remain) uncertain as to whether you can make a custom rank system name list (etc) like the other name lists, though I have been told you can edit the existing ones.
Things That Would Be Nice
Double under-lining the point about no expectations and this being the dev's hobby, but they would be nice to have. I also appreciate these things may be extremely non-trivial under the C# engine; my own programming skills are limited to what I can manage in Notepad (NotePad++ at a push), Excel 2010 and the threat of a sound beating, so I can only infer they would be difficult or time-consuming.
1) Multiple save options. It would be nice to have an in-game method of saving (and loading) different files of the same game (as opposed to having to occasioally manually copy/paste/rename the entire database) for more than the rotating back-up saves. The whole database doesn't appear to be much bigger than a lot of my typical save games with other games. (But as I say, I would guess if this were easy to do, the dev would probably have already done it. ) In most games generally, I tend to have a rotating stack of several saves (which minimised the chances of loosing data if something Goes Horribly Wrong. . . Not that it always helps, Imperator, looking at you. . . ) The ability to load up a save when I do something inept like miss the notification for idle labs for six months or something.
2) Tooltips. They would be nice (but VERY non-trivial to do, of course, assuming they could even be done in C#). But I would feel remiss if I didn't at least mention them.
3) Some sort of additional feedback, maybe just for important events (e. g. idle labs, things that requires the player's input or action), like audio that plays on auto-turn interrupt or something. In a perfect world, a slightly different sound for different events. (Simple pings or dings would be enough. ) Failing that, possibly some sort of colour-coding for the events logs, making it slightly easier not to miss important notifications? (I'd say little flags like the Paradox GSG use or something, but that would require both graphical effort (and KNOW how much of a pain that is, having done my own icons for yesterday, just cribbing from my own wargaming efferts) and likely a GREAT deal of extra technical effort for something that the dev himself likely doesn't need.
As I say, I intend to put forward these suggestions constructively as things that I think would improve the game, rather than a demand for "do x,y,z!" as you sadly so often see these days, so please take them in the spirit that they are intended; and thnk you again for the hard work that has brought the game to this point already.