And yet combat is central to the whole game, but is a total mess with completely hidden mechanics and numbers.

The impending release date should not be an excuse to ignore this. Indeed, this should be reason to delay the release.

being able to toggle a filter to see only military ships on the main map

The click blockers are a bit of a nightmare, particularly when things get a bit laggy and the framerate drops. And those lists keep resetting their vertical scroll position on every click and the list filtering is terrible. Trying to use the UI for any practical ends isn't possible. In a game with only 3 worlds and 5 ships it's fine, but that's the first 20 minutes of play time, after that the UI becomes useless. I'm uncertain why scaling the universe was a goal but not scaling the UI controls.  Also document the currency of the modding features please, particularly non destructive atomic modifications.

Also spawn ship building starbases on a persistent trajectory, like south east of the planet, sometimes they spawn to the left or right or above and there's no hope of even seeing those, let alone clicking on them with those huge janky planet banners. I play overhead angle only as it helps mitigate some of these problems marginally.  Why are those banners even interactive? they occupy play space arrrrgh. lol