Support Problem and 0.72 Feedback

Well, my new duties at work are really eating up my time and leaving too little time for gaming, so I'm a little late on providing feedback.  Sorry.

First, there is a problem with the support site.  I tried twice to submit a trouble ticket with attached files and received the following error messages both times:

"We encountered a problem (cross-site request forgery detected); please try again"

"Sorry, we encountered a problem (invalid department). Please start over."

Having submitted many trouble tickets, I'm fairly confident I did it right, so not sure why the error.

Feedback: Okay, I am on turn 274 as the Terrans on an Immense Map with 5 AI players and all settings at Common except for anomalies and relics at abundant.  This build had been very stable until my first CTD on turn 274 when opening the Diplomacy Screen.  The crash did not repeat after reloading the game.

Ideology: Love the new UI.  The cost needs to scale with the map size.  I have completed both the Benevolent and Pragmatic trees and am about a quarter done with the Malevolent tree.  I still believe that, overall, the Benevolent path is overpowered compared to the other paths, particularly in early game because it really speeds up colonization of new worlds.  However, the Malevolent/Aggression perk that gives an Overlord class ship to each world is definitely overpowered because it is too easy to get that in the early part of the game.  The Pragmatic tree is not very impressive in its perks for the early game.  Getting Benevolent first and them doing the Pragmatic tree was a nice balance because the Pragmatic tree is better for mid-game (my opinion).

Technology: I'm not the first to say this but I will repeat it--I find the Tech Tree much more useful than the Technology screen.  I would prefer to get right to the Tech Tree without the extra clicks.  Also, I think the game would be far more interesting if we could only pick one of the Focus techs instead of all three.  This would allow even more specialization of each race (do you want to fit more stuff, OR have it more powerful, OR have it cost less).  Again, my opinion.

Ship Designer: Thank you for fixing the crash when building ship designs from prior game builds.  I am using my custom designs extensively in my current game.  The resizing problem is still there where custom parts are appearing smaller in game than in the Designer, but I am hoping that will be fixed in an upcoming build.  When you get around to polishing the Designer, I would love to have another ship building contest (without the money prize--my opinion) to showcase what it (and we) can do.

Planets: I am enjoying the special planets and the new look to the planet screen.  I really hate the sound effects.  I do wish that terraforming technologies would not use the same tiles.  I find myself not terraforming planets until I get Ultra-Terraformers because it's the only way to maximize the number of usable hexes I can get on a planet.  If the different techs would not use the same hexes, I could confidently terraform hexes as I progress up the tech tree without worrying that I might end up with fewer usable hexes at the end.  Another issue, when single-clicking on a planet or starbase or shipyard, is there any way to get a thumbnail of the defending ships so I can see at a glance what is there instead of having to hover over the generic ship icon?

UI: This is a minor annoyance.  The slider bar on the right when I click and grab will "stick" to my mouse after I release it.  So, say I am looking for the planet that is lowering my approval, I click and grab the slider to find the offending planet, spot it, then try to move the mouse to click the planet, and the scroll keeps moving with my mouse.  Annoying.  I want to be able to scroll, then when I release the mouse, not have the slider bar still locked to it.

Planet Flipping: This has been mentioned by others but I had a planet flip to me and the other race's ships were still in orbit around my (now) planet.  I couldn't kick them out.

Shipyards and Starbases: Okay, when I click on the turn button for "Idle Shipyard" or "Upgrade Starbase" I want the game to go to the shipyard or starbase on the map, not open the shipyard or starbase UI.  I too often have to close the window and see exactly what shipyard or starbase I am looking at so I know what to build/upgrade.  Another way this could be solved is to have the main map as the background image for shipyards and starbases (centered on the appropriate shipyard or starbase).  That way, when the UI opens, I will know exactly where I am on the map.

Well, there is more, but those are the major points and this is getting long.  Great work overall on the game; I am really starting to have that familiar "just one more turn" feel.