I'm about ~7 hours in and played ~60 years. Early going is incredibly slow especially trying to figure stuff out. I'm doing a 600 star 16 AI/4 advanced start AI elliptical galaxy. Got invaded by my neighbor early on when I had 3 colonies and his fleet was slightly larger but luckily I just finished destroyers and was able to dunk him since he only had corvettes. Combat/war seems very unimpressive and based on doomstacks so far but maybe thats just lol AI? When you retreat the enemy can just follow and immediately restart combat 1 system over so war seems really "all in." I expect some type of retreat mechanics like in EU4 to make their way over or something.
I uplifted two steam age civs I came across and they eventually became my vassals which is cool. Another pre-FTL civ was split into nation states and I had planned to uplift them as well but got embroiled in an expansionist war and forgot them, and sometime during that period they apparently discovered FTL themselves and became a one planet empire (which I promptly conquered).
My original warlike neighbor got annexed by his even more warlike neighbor who was almost twice my size (no nearby colonizable stuff
), but was able to form a stellar pact with 2 smaller states and the 3 of us combined (plus my 2 vassals) are too strong for him. Ran across 2 fallen empires and have finally gotten info on the other side of the galaxy which contains the largest AI empire yet discovered (and they aren't a fallen empire, just apparently crushing everyone).
Biggest annoyance is that you can't zoom out of solar into galaxy which is a design decision that makes 0 sense. I'd also love a ledger of some sort since thats in ~every other paradox game.