Wow! These Beta versions are getting MUCH better each time. There are many new features in this one, over 4C, and 4D is very stable. I have been playing on my crappy work laptop for hours without any crashes or lockups. The zoom-in/zoom-out seems a little smoother to me this time. The Minor Races are a lot of fun, but may be a bit too powerful (just my opinion so far - I'm still in the early game phase).

My biggest complaint right now is the bug that kills saved games (you can never reload your game again) when you upgrade/obsolete/delete a ship in some way. I'm not sure exactly what triggers it, but it really sucks to have your savegame corrupted and have to start over. I reported a TON of other minor bugs in the Beta 4D Report thread, but none of them are serious enough to prevent you from playing through the game.

Other than that one bug, there is nothing else serious enough to keep me from finding a workaround. The AI races are doing well in the early game, colonizing planets, doing research, trading techs, etc. In fact, to assure myself a victory (I don't really want a challenge at this point, I just want to test the whole game) I have to push the difficulty down to Beginner. It's sad for me, I know, but that speaks well for the AI anyway. Once the game balancing is done, I want to try the higher levels.

The game is becoming fun to play now, and I am less inclined to request new features from Stardock, and more interested in suggesting minor tweaks to fix stuff that is already in there (ex: pointing out things that are hard to see when you are zoomed out, buttons that don't work right, glitches in the ship design window, etc). I can TOTALLY see them having this game finished by the end of February.

This build is looking great. Nice job!