Howdy,

I just picked up GalCiv 3. I've been a long-time fan of 4xs, but I sort of stopped playing them after they started getting very micro-heavy with poor automation and interfaces. I decided to pick it up because its predecessor was fairly well-regarded and it seemed like a good time to jump in.

Overall I'm having a lot of fun and the game seems like a great platform. Had a bit of a learning curve, but it seems like a lot of effort was put into making the game smooth to play after you figure out where things are and how they work, and it shows. Despite the available complexity, it's mostly easy to manage and work with.

That said, I had a list of specific issues and recommendations that could significantly improve the "QoL" side of the gameplay:

1. Issue: Ship design and shipyard lists get too long and messy. The automated ship designs are fantastic, but the resulting list gets rather long to scroll through. Recommendation: Lists need to be (at minimum) sortable or (ideally) grouped by categories / tabs. For example, tabs or groups based on size of ship or type of primary weapon or role.

2. Issue: Getting lost in the tech tree. I think it's organized well overall, but it is too "zoomed in" -- I can't see the rest of the tech category or the other trees from the spot I'm currently viewing. Recommendation: (a) allow the player to "zoom out" to see more of the tech category (allows me to see more of the tree in the first place), and ( place some background art reflecting the theme of that subsection of the tech category (e.g. factories behind the factory section, research behind the research section) -- this makes it faster to find sections I'm looking for.

3. Issue: Main map is bit of a "wall of text" -- by text I mean random space objects (stars, planets, dead planets, asteroids, anomalies). I think there is something missing in the presentation of the map that helps demarcate solar systems so that it's easier to perceive a more "ordered" galaxy (rather than so much random stuff). Recommendation: sorry, I don't have any specific suggestion here. I would say a background around each star hinting at its boundaries, but the map is busy enough as it is. I'm not really sure of a good solution here aside from make the entire map generation more star-centric (e.g. having stuff closer to stars, with fewer stars, with more empty space in between stars).

4. Issue: Difficult to track terraforming options. Specifically, due to the tile adjacency mechanic I want to make sure I plan out my terraforming as intended, since each terraforming tech has different restrictions. Note this is *mostly* an issue with the last terraforming tech that is usable only on a few tiles (I forget the name -- the one that costs a lot; maybe Biospheres something?). Recommendation: (a) Enable a filter on the planet management to show all terraform-able tiles and their thresholds. Temporarily fade improvements to make the terrain more legible. I've had a few instances where, due to the order in which I terraformed certain tiles, I ended up being unable to tform adjacent tiles. Bit obnoxious. ( Alternatively, make all the basic terraforming options select the same set of tiles ("easy" tiles or maybe up to "medium"), and then make that expensive later one allow you to terraform "almost any tile".

5. Issue: Camera controls in free mode slightly awkward. Recommendation: This may be something you want to avoid because I assume you put a lot of Q&A into it already and the playerbase may be familiar with the camera controls already based on prior games, but some other free-camera 3D games use: (a) LMB for camera rotation around a focal point, ( RMB for panning in all planes, and then use the (c) scrollwheel button to pan the focal point itself. I find this more intuitive overall. I wanna see all of the lightshow in the combat scenes .

Everything else has seemed fairly smooth from a UI perspective. Some things not fully intuitive, but mostly intuitive. Good enough, better than I had expected.