i'm really looking forward to the new quests chris, and everything that will hopefully add to the game.played through a game this evening and won on nightmare/misery setting (just short of 100 years total game time).... which was rather satisfyingThe increased relation requirements for starting/joining are definitely better, and make things a lot more tense/tricky to maintain the solar system in a good state until you hit that point.however i'm not so sue about these attitude buildings... was my first time playing with them, and they feel a little artificial to me. the idea is nice but they seem to be the go to exploit right now... spamming these to get certain relations to ride out the storm of events/wars.... will have to test more and see how it all feels.overall though i thoroughly enjoyed the play through, though just as in earlier versions, the time after your federation is formed and more or less winning is lacking in real interaction.... once we had four planets i pretty much just spammed 'assist armada construction' (apart from the odd bit of inciting attacks by my races and sabotage).... and waited it out.didn't need to research any tech all game, not once.... which felt kind of wrong.. my randomly assigned peltian ship was able to stack two cloaks which is pretty damn overpowered i reckon. i really love the challenge of playing the combat on misery but to me the late game combat is just too optional still. Early game its great to take out the pirate bases, attack outposts and help defend/attack planets... and in tonights game on nightmare it felt really necessary to do these things to ensure no-one else got out of hand while my races buddied up to form the federation - which is great. But once the federation is going it dosn't feel like i need to engage with that side of the game any more. Apart from withdrawing from assasination missions i didn't see the combat screen again after the fed was up, and withdrawing from those assasinations is not an issue so much now as the time you loose from withdrawing has been cushioned by the general slow down of the game (so no need to fight there).One thing to consider though here, when you do get to the late game if (as in my game tonight) you are way behind the tech curve then you feel like joining military actions would be suicidal (pretty much).... wouldn't it be reasonable to see those races who join with you in a federation share all their military tech with the hydral so that he can be combat effective to help them militarily? and would it not be reasonable for the federation races to then request the hydrals assistance in defense/attack in quests... which if ignored would degrade inter-federation relations? and if your relation with all other members of the federation gets too low into the neutral/negative ranges then perhaps the other members could even potentially kick you out the federation?also, really hoping for some kind of quest which also threatens the existence of the federation late game.. perhaps a terrorist attack that you get information of, which will potentially turn one federation race against another and split the federation apart and so you need to intervene to stop it.and one further idea that crossed my mind while playing tonight was this: perhaps the AFA could have agents, active operatives who fly around the system doing similar things that the player can do but working against the player and trying to break apart the federation. I realise this would be no small thing to add, but i can see this giving the 'game pushes back' effect to TLF - which it dosn't really have right now after you've got your federation up (assuming you have set things up pretty well). For example, you could hear reports on the activities of the AFA operative (blowing up attitude buildings, assisting other races in building other attitude buildings to help bring about alternative alliances to the federation, building relations, setting up trade routes, smuggling in resistance fighters, etc..) and perhaps have to rectify his actions through quests or try to hunt the AFA agent down through a quest given by races who 'have one cornered'.anyway, like i said the game is coming on great, keep at it ...and nightmare was definitely a better challenge.though like GC13 said above, its still a little to simple to win once you figure things out.