Upon clicking "New Game", the visuals freeze for about 30 seconds. During this time, a second music track plays simultaneously to the first track, so two songs are playing at the same very dissonantly.
There are also moments during gameplay, such as scrolling the strategic map for the first time or during combat, when the game freezes for several seconds.
Overall, it's an interesting concept, but combat starts to get unwieldy for me once 7 or more ships are deployed because I can't see all of my own ships on screen /and yet/ I'm still responsible for controlling them. It might be best to just have the other friendly ships be computer-controlled. Alternately, just have my other ships be clustered around me instead of starting off in a vertical line.
In-combat movement controls are poorly explained. "Use W, A, S and D keys to move" in the vast majority of other games implies that W moves up, A moves left, S moves down, and D moves right. What INSTEAD happened was that W moved forward, S seemed to do nothing, A turned left, and D turned right. I lost my first fight partially because I trying to move down and couldn't figure out why the controls weren't working.
Combat is too fast for my comfort, but that may be because I'm not a young man, anymore.
Given the amount of space available in the strategic map, you might want to have icons or labels for what resources are produced by different tiles. Alternately, allow the player to double-click any tile to see what that tile is and what it produces (along with, if necessary, a note saying "You do not own this tile.").
This is a promising prototype and I wish you Good Luck with it!