5-30-60 impressions

[sg225]

Good first 5 minutes, first hour actually went by fast. Windows 7, 64 high end machine no problems downloading.
The opening set up is pretty straight forward. Plenty of options so far for size, and difficulty. I didn't notice ability to choose faction vs. forced to use particular one. May have missed it.
I enjoy Civ 5 alpha centauri type games, so much here is familiar. I don't like to use mouse as much, would like key codes in help index. Matrix often does that.
The customizing individual units is good/interesting and new. I didn't see easy way to rename units?? for example colonial marines flamethrower. Probably missed it.
Stacking units was initially a little confusing, but eventually noticed the stacking info. Also, stats display for unit strength/stacked strength very well.
When a unit is in a city, you can't click on city, but have to click on city name to open it. Good data in city screen. That was good. Not clear on how to impact stats yet, but its beta.
DIdn't see roads option, they just started appearing when formers were on auto. I was wondering if there was a bonus for connections between cities.
Xenos killed marines on first encounter on very easy mode. Wiped out city. Some help on city buildihng would help, like what's max size, or when you set up second city in help.
Research is good. I like the shorter research periods personally so you get something for efforts vs. waiting forever. Plus you can update units with new equipment. Also, choices are initially limited, ie. no vertical scroll, but they
go horizontal from six initial category choices. That's a little different, see how I like it. Production. Not clear in an hour how exactly it works or best strategies to improve mining/farming. Overall,
Good first impression in first hour, there is a lot of things to learn, there are new aspects of 4X type gameplay in a new environment.