Just finished automating blue science (also did military before blue), so I thought I would share my thoughts about it so far.

"OSHIT That's Awesome" moments:

• New belt graphics. They really give belts some depth and motion. They are probably the most common thing to be placed on a map, and now they are also one of the most interesting to look at.
• Power pole changes. Both the graphics, which are awesome, and the new recipe. It was way more interesting to automate them with the addition of the iron rods. I love how you can see places for the red and green wires to connect to the poles now.
• Pipes now display the liquid they are connected to in alt mode, even if they are empty. I love that. Should help new folks by eliminating confusion.

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Things I'm not so sure about:

• In theory I like the blue science change. And military for that matter. Ultimately it means a more diverse resource requirements, not just iron iron iron. But it seems to me to make the jump from green to blue feel even more overwhelming than it used to. It was more comfortable in a way to just make more iron. It's a different kind of logistical problem to supply a larger variety of resources in smaller quantities. This was compounded by the fact that I had to work pretty hard to get to my first oil source. It was far away and I had to clear a lot of biters. It felt like the jump from green to blue was far more arduous than what I am used to, and I'm not so sure that's a good thing.
• The map I got was pretty interesting. I usually turn cliffs off because I hate them, but I decided to try the changes. I turned the cliff frequency way down and turned the continuity almost all the way up. My start area is almost totally encircled by continuous cliffs. I resisted the urge to restart and turn cliffs off and just embraced them as a constraint of planning. They were pretty successful in forcing me to change what I would have liked to do, and solve the specific problems of that map.

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Things I love:

• The new science interface/tree is great. The tech tree makes more sense, and it seems to guide the player toward advancing. I don't love how the cost is displayed. The research period time is displayed before the cost so at a glance I have misread it a number of times.
• Biter changes are pretty neat. I like that the worms spit a dodgeable projectile. Makes them almost harmless to you on foot and deadly when you're in a vehicle. Also they look really cool.

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Thoughts? Most of the harder changes I haven't really touched yet. I'm sure there's more to come.