Some ideas that I would like to be addressed.

Description

First of all thanks for this great patch, I have played about 5 hours (opps) and not come across any game stopping issues, and the game feels a lot better. Love the progress sliders they really make a difference, although I am now burning to know who is fighting when empire X goes red.... (maybe there could be a general intelligence setting to research who is fighting who, including border clashes with unkown enemies)

I do however have a couple of niggles. (these are only in the order that i remember them, not importance)

1. Combat Radius - I feel that 1500 is too low, I have encountered ships at speed 12 that have been easily able to run away from my attacking ship with speed 16 (once a speed 10 ship was able to escape undamaged). I have altered this setting to 2000 and found it allows me to catch ships with a speed difference of 4 most of the time but not always.

2. Population happiness - I have the racial bonus to population happiness and have found that my populations go pretty much instantly to Jubilant and stay there, with nothing else to affect them (such as fate shrine from religious tech) I am still playing my 1st game so might just be lucky, but it does seem to be too easy.

3. Is it PLEASE possible to have a switch to disable the sounds in ship construction, as they are really bugging me, I don't want to turn off the sounds as I find others of them usefull in letting me know what is going on, and don't want to turn my speakers off as I listen to my music whilst playing.

4. Another option (or 2) on the Design cue would also be great, All Non Obselete constructions (ships AND units). I personally find it a bind to have to be swapping back and forth between Ships and Units, having them seperate in the construction cue is great as its keeps it simple.
4.1 Also is it possible to limit the ship/unit designs so for example if you are a crystal race you only see crystaline ship optionss. (I would make this a player defined option)

5. Is it possible to add Custom Cue layouts to the save game or save empire list (or make it a seperate entry that you can load elsewhere). I have my own preferences for layouts regarding construction and plants cues and find it annoying that I have to re-create these custom layouts every game, even more so that I have to give them a name to save them but can't access them in a new game.

6. Is it possible to put a filter button on the Research Cue that allows you to hide completed techs so that they are no longer shown. If you could make it that you could manualy hide certain techs as well would be even nicer (If I am using organic tech I tend to stick to purely organic weapons so being able to hide all (or certain) others would be great)

7. I am still unable to spend tech points on racial techs in race design, if I am an Organic race it would be great if I could spend tech points on organic tech before I start the game.

I know most of these are fairly minor and cosmetic but I think they would help make this game even better