Things are looking better and the game is becomming much more stable. I have noticed a few things I wanted to mention though.
Saving - When I save a game to an existing slot I do not see the 'Replace' dialog until I back out of the save screen then back out of the menu to the game itself. Then I see the dialog asking if I want to overwrite my existing save. Also, I have to hit 'Yes' twice for it to actually save. Lastly, on my system at least, the selected button (the one I move my cursor over) is dimmer than the non-selected button. This seems counter-intuitive.
Loading - When I load a saved game I notice a few things. I get two icons, one for the build queue on one of my planets and one for research. This is just like when you start a new game except that my planets now have their build queues set and research has already been set. Also I do not see any border/influence information until the first planet actually does put out a build message.
Build messages - When I build Soil Enhancement, the only purpose of which is to allow me to build something else, I feel that the message icon should be different from other build icons. Either that or it should automatically bring me to the planet's build queue, but that might be a bit too forceful. Anyway, I am usually going to want to build something on the newly available square.
Starport Build queue - I would like to more clearly see what I am currently building.
Shipyard - Updating ships does not seem to work. Also, when building a ship, the component list (of what I've added to the ship) does not scroll properly. I can not remove a component that I've added.
Ship facing - Ships still fly while facing the wrong way at times. They get where they are going but it looks goofey. I don't remember the specifics of when this happened but I will look for it again. It did eventually correct itself.
Colonizing - When I colonize a new world I need a way to get to that world to set it's build queue. I find that when I have six or eight worlds and I am sending out three colony ships and one of them reaches it's destination I have to hunt for quite a while to find out where I need to set the build queue.
The game seems much more stable overall, except for alt-tab which crashes. Keep up the great work.