Is their anyway we can get a friends list to keep in contact with good players?

click on one of their outposts, and then click on the little 'i' button in the top right hand corner, and then press the heart button again in the top right hand corner to become friends with them. I don't know if you can see your friends list or whether you can contact them outside of a game. Also I don't you can search for players outside of games so I don't think friending by that method is valid either, unfortunately....

Yeah it's very limited at the moment. If you 'heart' people like tw2000 describes, you can select them more easily when creating a new game. You can invite your friends and people you played with in the past.

Also I believe in the list of open games, a heart appears if one of your friends joined that game.

But no chat, no looking up player. For now, I hope.