I was a little put off by the first time I tried this, since my system kept running into issues and I wasn't sure why my Constitution class was getting blown up repeatedly by the Cardassians. I told myself I'd give it another go (mostly because of Stress's name recognition, I was a wannabe modder in the Armada/SFC days) and put a little more time into it since I figured that was probably my fault.
Since it crashed on me, this is very far from complete (I only got to about my third research tier), and since I'm not using the rebuilt version, some of these issues might be fixed.
Impressions..
The good:
- UI looks spectacular, very good work. It could use a semi-opaque "glass" sort of background, though, because the total transparency is a little distracting. Star Trek: Online has this same issue, actually, which is why I noticed it 
- Music is in general nice, levels are good, not too quiet or too loud. Some of it sounds like it's been edited or something, though, some of the horns' blaring seems jarring and sounds like somebody ran it through an amplifying filter or something.
- I initially had issues with a lot of CPU utilization, that seems to have fixed themselves for some reason, probably not the mod's fault. Seems to run well in any case.
- Ship viewscreen pictures are nice. Very nice.
- Research tree is relatively intuitive. Nice flow, looks good. "One level" research is best.
- Impact and shield effects look GREAT, though I thought the Federation's shield impacts were light blue?
- Models have great textures, look very crisp, no complaints.
The bad:
- Unit roles seem to be..a little poorly defined. I assume the Centaur is a anti-strike craft thing from the "good against" text, but its description isn't very..descriptive, and it appears to actually be the first combat vessel you can use to clear out other planets (good luck doing that against those huge Galors though). If the Constitution establishes new colonies, why can't it colonize? Why not just say it "explores"? Why is a 100-year old ship that has "escort" as one third of its total usage roles in the text more powerful than the ships I start with and why would I waste my money researching it over the Excelsior, one research tree before? (I did, though, because I like the ship ) Flavor text is nice, but intuitive flavor text is better.
- If I can't get any capital ships from the start, please don't give me a capital ship point and the capability of building huge-ass shipyards. It means I waste my money, build time, and it also gets my hopes up. Just putting the Utopia shipyards behind a research option would fix that.
- Flavor is great, but calling them the Utopia Planetia and San Francisco yards is probably not a great idea since you end up building a ton. Why not make a separate 'special' SF Yards/Utopia shipyard and have it placed in the home planet of the Federation player (through galaxyscenariodef) but not buildable (not in the player def), then make a 'basic' shipyard buildable in the list through the PlayerX file?
- I know you can't make straight pulse phasers that miss (they have to curve somewhat), but up their range a little at least. Ships running into each other during combat is a little weird, and the maps are certainly big enough.
- It takes a really long time to kill stuff. I dunno if this is intended or not, but very looooong combat.
- I like that I have a long time to get out of combat if my shields are down, but I think it should be easier to kill something with its shields down. Warping out is almost instant as well. The inverse is that it takes a very long time for the shields to recharge: out of combat, I shouldn't have to wait a long time for 'em to go up. I'm pretty sure Sins automatically decreases shield regeneration in combat, so simply raising their regen rates should fix this.
- Local militia is pretty hard-ass. I can build a lot of ships to combat them, but giant fleet masses don't seem very Star Trek-y: it should be more about one or two ships kicking ass than twelve Excelsiors.
- I think ships accelerate if not move too quickly, they're doing very fighter-esque sweeping movements. It feels like Star Wars to me, very WWII-esque, and I'm not sure if that's what you wanted to convey.
The ugly:
- Phasers on the Constitution seemingly don't come from the saucer, rather in front of it.
- Ships have no impulse exhaust trails? I mean, the ones in STO are ridiculously long, but that's no excuse for none of them!
- Ships have no self-illumination? The ships' textures are great, but there's no special illumination on the deflector dish or anything.
- The commander icon in the viewscreen has a halo around him. Looks like bad Photoshopping of the guy (I forgot his name but he looks familiar) from the background?
- Constitution Class seems to have bugged lightmaps. I've ran into this bug before, not sure why, but having the thing turn completely black except at a top angle isn't normal.
- Several different voices used for certain ships. I recognized these from A2, but I'm pretty sure in A2 the commander voices were all of homogeneous genders.
- To expand on the UI issue, at a smaller resolution it is difficult to read research text because there's no background to it and it overlaps the tree. Same fix would be good.
- No divider between capital ship crew # and fleet #?
- Why are the Federation using "disruptor"s?! That's gotta be an easy ctrl-f -> replace to Pulse Phaser.
- There ain't no second capitalized S in "Starship". Wouldn't bug me too much if it wasn't the first research tree thing and it's very noticeable. The strings in general need a grammar check, and without consulting memory alpha, I'm not sure why a planet is called the "Zahl homeworld" rather than just Zahl or something, and even if the planet was never named, it's still jarring to see it like that and probably should be replaced with a different name.
- Have you gotten rid of the red background color for unresearched ships? It makes figuring out which ships are available (and which aren't) very difficult at a glance.
- I came across a "borg fleet" made of Cardassians - I read that you were using placeholders for the Borg for pirates, but this map had no pirate base and these appeared to be local militia. Why do local militia have Borg names?
- I had some audio issues like crackling and slight stuttering, but that might be on my end.
In general, some things about it were very obviously WIP, but unlike any other SoaSE TC I've tried (except maybe my own 
) it seemed like a new game to me. And that's huge. The things that were unfinished were unfinished but the things that were worked on really felt solid - the ships, most of the research, weapon effects, sounds, etc. I'd say once there's a little more work done on gameplay mechanics and maybe some easy decorations like impulse exhaust, it'll be top-notch. Good work, and if I get the time I'll be sending some contributions and bugfixes your way come the rebuild release.
