Nice to see some gamecompanies trying to stand up against those Starforce-Nazi's.
Anyway the game is really awesome, one of the best 4x games in a long time. I too like to make my own ship design's and it has quite some depth too. You're not hindered by any maximum part numbers when designing you're ship you can decide for yourself how many pieces you put on it, beware though for the looks it has no max but as for pieces that give your ship some abilitys well those are ofcourse coming at a max.
The only thing i don't like is how the galaxy is represented as a 2d grid, i'd like my galaxy's to look realistic and ofcourse the starsystems represented on a 3d scale/grid.
Another 4x game soon to be released is
Sword of the Stars it's from the makers of Homeworld Cataclysm, and it's looking great from the screens it has the basic gameplay of a 4x game with the realtime space battles of Homeworld. The UI is looking great too.
I really hope there will be a demo of the is game out soon, because i've played galciv2 a bit too much for the last couple of weeks.
Jam it back in, in the dark.