I know there's a preference for facebook and twitter, but I don't have those, so the link in the newsletter brought me here:
If you don't mind, I will answer few of them preemptively. Bear in mind it is just my best knowledge of things. FD could give more detailed answers
Questions for the stream:
1. Can you clarify briefly for us new beta testers, how testing/bug reporting will happen? For example:
* Bug logging: I understand there's a dedicated tester-forum? Or is there an error logging tool?
I can answer it for you already (unofficially of course, but things have been this way so far). First, bugs generally are either crashes, or weird/unwanted game behaviour. For both cases, you will click on "Technical Support" in ED Launcher, which will open ticket service web site. Then you will log in using your usual creditentials. Then you will report ticket as you saw it.
Sometimes game will produce a crash, and will ask upload crash dump/report to ED servers. In that case in ticket accompanying crash dump mention precise date/time of the crash (in GMT/UTC), so they can look up and get more data from it about what happened.
Things that are game play requests (you want to suggest change, you have additional idea) are usually suggested to discuss in Beta forum first, as it is not ticket, as mostly enhancement request/wish-list, and others and devs can weight in.
* Process: What's the main difference with alpha? Do we just goof around with as many aspects of the game or are there dedicated/minimal set of actions to perform?
Again, in my opinion, but no, it won't change, just play the game as you see fit, of course, maybe more widely than usual (everything will go under reset anyway in first betas). They have quite a QA team there, and I guess if they will want reproduce something, they will do their own testing using user ticket reports as guidance.
2. Will we be able to save/log out outside of stations in the released game? If so, what will be the functional difference with logging in a station? (eg. despawn timers etc...)
Very good question, it would be nice for them give full answer. What we know so far, you will be able to save your position/log out in deep space, however how it will work in details is not yet known.