gameplay and game control issues like how to establish trade routes and get to know which of all the options and menus you can
ignore until late-game, will get explained in Alpha7 with in-game tutorials and tooltips, so no worries, it isn't that much more complex than good old botf, just remember when you played botf for the first time and probably didn't know what to do with research and stuff anyway. It does not take much more time to get to turn 100 with nearly-optimal strategy than in unmodded vanilla botf.
the 9 slots are actually intended to help people reducing their micromanagement efforts since I know from playing botf myself, that I usually keep filling up all slots with 9x buildings/ships but then next turn or the turn after that when I researched new structures I found myself time-consumingly erasing the whole build queue again and setting up things anew. It's quick to be changed in the publicly available source code anyway.
going to shipyard is actually easier than in botf because it isn't a totally different menu but a sub-menu of the build menu. Also you can use cursors and extra mouse buttons for quick switching through your systems/colonies in build menu.
trade routes are established in system->trade menu and there just like in botf, nothing fancy (except that a trade route slowly increases your relationships with that specific minor over time as well as when you help him terraform his planetary system
). Of course this is not explained to the beginner, but again, comes with Alpha7 along with a start menu deserving its name..
I also know people would like it a lot more if we could show a video of some fancy in-game space battles, well, but this is up to people like Xordan to try and get their (way more experienced) hands on it. It's also until then till the game can really replace botf in total concerning gameplay features.
But right now, it has the better AI (minus some things listed below), auto-build actually does something meaningful with your colonies' build queues (it is activated by going to Empire menu, there under Systems, click on one of your choice and press the 'A' button on your keyboard), it is much more stable in multiplayer, okay, it (still) lacks a few things, so let's list them for easier referring:
- colored start menu
- galaxy creation parameter settings
- AI building troops and managing them for invasion and defence purposes (hence no AI-led invasions or invasion defence yet)
- 3D battles
- Random events and alien ships type "Cristalline entity" or "Gomtuu"
- in-game encyclopedia and tutorials
- some kind of Borg race
- minor race fleet movement AI
- have some minors act like "medium" race, i.e. expanding to nearby habitable star systems and maybe even invade other systems (then mostly at the beginning when majors are weak(er) than those minors
- Windowed-mode for bote (right now it's just full-screen)
- formula for crew experience gain after a battle
- artwork (UI menu design) for our sixth race, the Omega-Alliance (thus greyed-out and not playable yet)
For all those who do not like the new resources like Titanium and stuff, it's nothing easier than to mod them out of the game by making all structure and ship build cost requirements zero for these resources. It is still balanced then, requires maybe some minor adaptions but nothing too fancy for an experienced botf modder. We have editors for changing buildings, ships and minor race names and stats. Making a total conversion mod for example is as easy as using the Ultimate Editor for botf.
So in the end, if you're going to have a full look at it, it has the potential to be modded to be really close to botf in all terms, which it was originally intended anyway. Biggest handicap still remains 3D battle, of course.
And no, I don't take criticism as harsh, only thing I would be glad to see is that you took your time and gave it a fair chance in the end. Most stuff that people mention about missing in-game I know about anyway, since it probably bugs every botf player and I'm also one myself
. About it being not close to finished, well, we gave it version number 0.8 so we think it's not that far away, at least not decades..
Alpha8 should then already become beta1 so all of the things listed above (minus probably the 3D battle, which depends on others to be done or gets on our to-do list after beta1 in case SirP wants to learn 3D programming too) should be solved by then.
About the other thing with the trek mod, well that's up to the community or anyone who wants to do it. We decided for us that we do not want to get in trouble with (stupid) german and french law, so whoever is not "subjugated" to the "droît d'auteur", can just do whatever he wants, like it's done here with botf for example.