So I just downloaded and installed the Elemental Beta, that part went flawlessly.

Startup is a bit interesting, as I have Zone Alarm firewall installed and I know its making the load screen hang. I can tell because the cursor changes to the standard windows mouse when I go down to the lower right corner of the screeen (where ZA alerts popup). I usually find the "allow" button pretty easy, but Elemental won't let the alert have screen priority, so I can't see to select the "remember this option" select. -- Normally I would just go into ZA settings and set the Elemental exe to have access anytime, but its not anywhere to be found in the ZA interface, which is odd. So ideas on how to fix this?

Next, once past that intro loading screen I LOVE the honesty involved in the beta. Keep some of the 8 bit style graphics in the final product if possible, its awesome.

Getting a game going is not that hard. my machine handles it well (Intel Core Duo 1.83 GHz, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 7300 Go).

Scrolling with my mouse -- not so great, it often doesn't work, and seems incredible slow -- this is adjustable though so the speed isn't a problem, mostly the consistency with the scrolling working.

My Sovereign dissapeared after I set him to auto-explore and built my first city (literally, he dropped off the map and I cannot find him).

When I went to the menu to save the game and try to tweak ZA, the menu text was still visible with the save screen popped up (as in I could read the menu text -through- the save box).

one last thing, just a nitpick, one of the things it seems like you guys are very interested in reporting is bad map setups, yet I can't find an option to display the whole map so I can see how things are. So I do I have to explore the whole map (with my invisible soverign) in order to see if the map seed is bad?

Love all my stardock games so far, and Elemental is sure to be the best for me, just doing what I can to help that be possible.