I realize this is not the most important thing at this point, its not even the most important thing for me personally, but reading the PCgamer article and seeing the part where diplomacy improvement and dealing with NPC factions get mentioned... - just wanted to ask for these (minor factions) to be actually fully fleshed out, this time around.

By that i mean, not to be just variation of the basic 3/6 factions with some specific tech (that only does some buff/debuff type of thing, so its more of a numbers thing, not directly visible ingame), but otherwise same kind of units and whatnot - but completely visually distinct factions, with their own ship and structure designs, both visually and gameplay-wise, some unique technologies not otherwise available to playable factions and overall distinct and unique character, perhaps even little piece of lore.  I would not mind even if these were actually different species than base 3 races, but if that wont fit the lore of all of this happening in Trader space, allright, they can all be just humans/Vasari - but please, make them feel and look different.

I realize this was not an option in Rebellion, due to technical limitations, but now thats resolved, there is no reason not to - except budget. And i for one would accept this being added post-launch as DLC for additional fee - feel free to go Stellaris route with the amount of additional content and post-release support.