1. Pacing: I felt the pacing of the game was a little too fast. I had SSD's flying around in under 30 minutes. I think the capital ships and titans should cost a lot more to produce. Also I think the planet colonization research should come back, otherwise it turns into a land grab. Maybe add options for terraforming to add popilation to volcanic and ice planets. Something that would that would be a significant investment to but may increase tax rates, refining rates, or production.
As far as the colonization thing, that was never a limiting factor in Sins. It's something you could still immediately research and really only served as a tick on the feature box for DLC. Also, planet types are meant to be good for different things; there are planets which specifically exist because of their high population. We're working to diversify that, not go back to homogenizing it more. We will, however, be making changes to production costs, incomes and build speeds as we go however, especially as we start to focus more on economic and cultural stuff.
2. Ship Options: In my opinion the New Republic had an awfully limited selection of ships. Especially the crusiers. The Republic-Class Star Destroyer could be an option since it was designed to replace the Victory I.
Actually, they have the same number of capitals, one more frigate and 2 fewer cruisers, so awfully limited in this case really just means one fewer overall. 5-7-5 vs 5-8-3. That being said, there are still a few (very few, but still) ships we're likely to add. The New Republic already has one cruiser that was almost finished, but the texture wasn't able to be done in time for release; the Corellian Proficient-class. The Republic Star Destroyer would be a capital, not a cruiser, and it's way too similar to the Nebula to be worth having (not to mention impossible to make look anywhere near visually appealing).
Also you could use some of the cruisers the Alliance used before the the New Republic was formed. It would make sense that they would continue to make use of some of these ships instead of immediatly mothballing or decomissioning them.
That's already what we're doing if you look at the ship roster. The CR90, Nebulon-B, Quasar, MC80, Assault Frigate, Gallofree, MC40 and MC30c are all from the Rebellion, and there are ships that ultimately replaced them in the NR, but for stuff that was used by both we tended to err on the Rebel side since they're more recognizable when it would be redundant to have both (people would always pick the Nebulon-B over the Corona). As for a possible 5th cruiser, the frontrunner would be the Dauntless.
Also I think the Black Sun or the Hutt could be used as the pirate faction and possibly some plantery "militas".
We're not looking for something to act as the pirate faction. While there were criminal and mercenary organizations in Star Wars, none of them were willing to or capable of attacking the major plaers like pirates in Sins. It just doesn't match the universe. As for militias, the goal is to have them as close to their proper political affiliation as possible, and the Black Sun didn't really control planets so they wouldn't be able to serve that function. The Hutts don't really have any ships that can be used to make militia, either.
I know there was some hesitaion to add star bases to the game but I believe that they should be added in some form to secure gas giants, nebulas, and important worlds. The Republic could make use of Empress-class stations and the the Remnant could use Cardan-class stations. As for the EotH, id suggest using creative license.
I think there's been some communication issues with this, but the baseline thing is that there will not be any Sins-style starbases which are pretty much stationary (or not) secondary titans which are also huge economic and cultural powerhouses. There will, however, be certain other space structures that function in somewhat similar ways with upgrades and abilities and whatnot that can be deployed, but that will be down the line a bit more, and it'll be more specialized. You won't get a single station that can just do everything. That doesn't exist in Star Wars, and we have no intention of introducing it. This sort of thing will be more fully addressed in a future news post.