I don't know how everyone else is doing, but I'm having a really hard time managing colonies and ship building. We really need to have some sort of notification as to when a ship is completed or when a planet has completed everything in it's queue, even if the planet is doing an economic, growth, or whatever boost.
The thing I hate the most is that I never know when my ships are completed. I have to check all my planets (which gets old when you have even 15) to see if any more ships were built, and then mouse over all the little icons to tell which are the ones I need to 'EJECT'. I really hate that word by the way. It just doesn't fit here.
The other problem is when you 'EJECT' (still hate it) several ships from orbit, they automatically create a fleet. I really don't like this, but I love the visual fleet movement, it is very, very polished and fluid (wait, this is an alpha?). An even bigger problem is when I 'EJECT' (hate) 3 ships from a planet, two form a fleet and the other just says "screw you guys" and doesn't join that fleet. The auto fleet forming script needs to make up it's mind.
The planetary structures need to auto upgrade themselves. I have to go through each planet and upgrade them manually. This is one of the few things that we need a governor for. Speaking of which...
We need planetary governors back. And smart ones too. Those adjacency bonuses make me think three times before placing structures (this is good, but takes a lot of time if you have many planets).
Previous generation structures need to be hide-able. I'm only 100 turns in and this is getting ridiculous. I have a hard time (especially as I don't know the look of all the structures and their bonuses) distinguishing the new structures from the old. There are also too many pictures/structures on the right of the screen. This is another reason ship production needs to be moved else ware.
Precursor/planetary tile bonuses are very confusing. I like that certain tiles give multiple bonuses (depending on what you construct there), but I wish that their picture coincided with the bonuses they confer. A picture that before gave morale bonuses (in GalCiv2) now gives tourism and industry boosts? I can understand from the description of the tile, but I have to mouse over each one and weigh my choices. Either these pictures need to only cover one bonus (have multiple pictures per tile) or the same picture needs to be divided up to show a tourism/industry bonus (a light green palm tree and an orange gear, respectively). Banking could be a yellow coin, culture the same light blue... thing, farming the same dark green wheat grass, and research the same purple triangle (all +1). You could then have different pictures for the +2 and +3 bonuses, but pictures that are relatively the same.
Keep up the good work Stardock! This alpha is one heck of an alpha!