for example the country control limits, where the more countries you have the more influence they cost you
This is mitigated later in game as you research projects that allow unifying countries into mega-nations. For example, you would eventually be able to create a mega-EU that includes Russia and Turkey.
didn't know the space layer was so detailed.
The game is pretty hardcore in terms of realistic space mechanics. For example, going from point A to B, you don't constantly have thrusters on. Instead, your ship will turn thrusters early on, burning fuel, to accelerate, coast for a long time with velocity gained and then turn around and burn the same amount of fuel it used to accelerate away from your target. This way, you actually arrive at it instead of flying by.
Also, it is interesting how armor and positioning works in combat. Nose of the ship has a very small cross-section, so it will have a very heavy armor for a reasonable weight. At the same time, area on ship's sides is huge and for same weight the armor would be very weak. Thus, you could take a lot of punishment from the front, but would be destroyed easily from the side. The implication is that it is absolutely critical to both not expose sides to enemy and to get shot at their sides.
But there is more: in combat your ships are moving towards enemy at the velocity they have. You can turn and acclerate (burning limited fuel), but turning engines off means you just keep moving at current velocity. There are no brakes! If you want to move away from enemy, or at least stop moving towards them, your ship will need to turn 180 degrees first and then accelerate away. The problem is: while you are turning you expose those juicy sides to enemy fire.
Getting some expanse vibes too, which is neat. If it is modder friendly it wouldn't be hard to make an alternate Expanse starting scenario.
Moddability looks very promising. It seems similar to Paradox games (Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron) in how game parameters are located: there are a lot of things in plain text files. You could make North Korea a hyper-advanced juggernaut with literally a minute of editing a plain text file. All ship modules, faction resources, etc. are easily editable in notepad even for someone who has zero experience modding.
I am pretty sure there will be a flat earth mod within months.