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Sword of the Stars: Born of Blood Expansion
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Well, if you keep in mind that your race's HR tolerance is random and that the range of planets you can colonise expands as you research more industrial or biological technology, it's really not quite as straightforward as "you need to research X and Y before you can colonise size 4 planets" or whatever. In fact there are often planets that no races in your game can colonise, but you can still stripmine them with later techs, giving you a oneshot production bonus and slightly increasing the resources at the planet you unload on.
Once you get that it's more of Spaceward Ho! in 3D with RTS-like battles, rather than Civ in space, the game seems a lot more intuitive. Frankly I don't have patience for many other 4x games now, even though SotS is currently light on trade and diplomacy.
Research is interesting. It doesn't hotkey, so you have to select the tech then push research to make your choice. The research slider controls how much of your empire's spare cash is going to savings, (which you need to build ships) and how much into your current research project.
Research works on a bell curve that centres on 100%. Sometimes you'll get a tech at 50%, sometimes at 150%. So you can't entirely predict when it's gonna finish and plan around the estimate. Kinda like real science.
Also, most of the techs in the game are on a random draw. So you can't rely on finding just one overpowered tech, and you have to be able to experiment and use different technologies to your advantage.
If you're familiar with dealing with game cameras like Homeworld's, it's pretty intuitive. I know that's not everyone's thing of course.
I like the game as it's an interesting mixture of simplicity and complexity.
So late in the game things can get pretty hectic and jumbled when looking upon the galaxy map, it can be difficult to spot things. Like enemy fleets inbound to one of your planets. Is there anywhere in the game where it will list enemy fleets you've detected which are inbound or do you have to just jet around the place every turn looking to make sure you didn't miss anything?
There are some display options [available on the button to the left of the news ticker] that might help, such as toggling star brightness or fleet lines. Selecting the Political map view [the one with colored blobs for colonized territory] and then selecting the Military option that appears in the lower-right will halo fleets with their empire's color. The size of the halo represents the distance that fleet can cover in one turn, while the intensity represents the number of ships. I don't know what happens if an enemy fleet includes a jammer to prevent you from knowing the number of ships in a fleet.
The History tab [part of the Empire Summary, accessed by clicking on the budget pie-chart] has a record of all news messages for the past several turns [like 10 or 20], which includes spotting new hostile fleets, but that is unwieldy to sort through.
When an enemy fleet is first spotted incoming, you can add a Note to their destination system, which places a flashing ! over that system, and a mark on the note icon in the Colonies or Explored Systems list in the Empire Summary. Text describing the incoming threat can be added to the note as desired.
This particular problem has been noted in an official forums Suggestions thread.
Smaller or differently-shaped maps can reduce late-game chaos.
tl;dr: Nothing that's exactly what you are looking for, but there are some options to limit or re-jumble the Strategic information. ;-)
I have it ordered, anyone here have it to offer a verdict?