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As a huge fan of the originals I was very excited for this game and I am happy to say it lives up to the hype, it retains much of the feel from the originals whilst bringing in some newer features and for the most part it's streamlined and works well but as with all things it still needs some work but nothing huge.

First issue I spotted was with regards to ship design, whilst researching weapons it tells you their range but when designing a ship I have not seen any part that lets me know the range of the weapon. After fitting some Mauler devices onto a Titan I soon realized it's effective range was actually close to the circumference of the ship :/

Another thing is weapon damage, in combat it shows you the range and attack power of a weapon but in design it only gives the weapons DPS which makes little sense seeing as apparently my 10 heavy mount Death Rays did 40DPS and my 20 Phasors did 400DPS yet in combat the Death Ray attack power was 500 and Phasors was something like 20 (they were point defense but the same can be seen with other weapons) 

You should add attack power to the weapon info and an overall attack power for your weapon stacks and total weapon systems to better see how it works as well as a range indicator, Maybe by hovering over said weapon/system it gives you a rundown of all it's stats. 

As for weapon range it seems that the range of a weapon starts from the very center of a ship, not bad for smaller ships but when using Titans and especially Doom Stars some weapon ranges (i'm looking at you Mauler Device) are pretty much the same size as the ship making them useless. The Mauler Device is useless on anything higher than a Battleship but that may be the point though I feel the range of a weapon should start on the edge of a ship and not in the middle. The main issue is with the Pyslon who's ships are round and big.

Second issue I had with weapons was the point defense option, I had 2 stacks of 25 Phasors on a Titan to destroy incoming missiles but found they would only shoot at least 2 of the missiles (sometimes just one) which made they pretty useless despite having so many, I understand that a stack of 25 would effectively act like a single weapon with 25x the power but if they are point defense they should be able to target and destroy multiple projectiles not just a couple.

This brings me to missiles and torpedoes in general, they are very overpowered, as their doesn't seem to be an effective way to counter large swarms of them they can easily down the largest ships with ease, I destroyed Orion's Guardian with 2 Titans armed just with mid-spec missiles. They feel too strong at the moment.

There is currently an issue with the ship designer, if the menu auto-selects a ship for you (if you edit and save a ship it moves it up the menu leaving you now selecting the next ship in line) but doing so keeps the same name as the previous ship preventing you from saving it . A minor issue and one easy to work around but something I thought I'd bring up.

At the moment it's difficult to see how larger engagements will work as on the only difficulty available (average) the enemy never attack even when at war, after 400 turns they still haven't got anything larger than a cruiser, and seem pretty laid back making for a very dull game where one of my 10 Titans can happily level their largest fleets, maybe "average" difficulty needs a buff.

One weapon I was very happy to see back in all it's planet splittings glory was the Stellar Converter, as OP as ever but destroying planets with it is WAY too easy, you don't have to attack the planet to remove any orbital defenses so I had a single ship armed with said weapon and it just  swatted any planet it came across without issue, I may be wrong but I thought in MOO 2 you at least had to destroy any defenses before being allowed to destroy the planet, either way maybe such a things needs to be added. 

As for the way it destroys a planet I would love to see some kind of animation, in MOO 2 you see a little video of the weapon opening up and impaling a planet, at the moment you click "destroy" then "POP!" would be cool to make it feel more powerful, more impact, but that's just me.

Some issues with planet structures showing up as glaring white squares and orbital structures hovering just above the ground so they stick half way out of the shield. 

With regards to defense structures I haven't had a whole lot of experience using my own as the AI never attack my colonies but I did notice that Military Outposts never upgrade, after a few Pirate attacks they are forever stuck using basic low level tech making them useless in later games (I cant speak for the Advanced Military Outpost as I have not been attacked) Is this intentional? And would it be possible to add in a feature where by you can upgrade them using a Space Factory ship, upgrading their systems and making them at least a little more viable.

With striking population it can be difficult to know why they are striking, if it's to do with Moral or Tax, or the planet they are on, maybe hovering hover said striking individual can tell you why they are on strike .
 

Right I think that's it for now, I am loving the game to bits so far and can not wait to play with the other races and try out the higher difficulties. Good work