Now I will admit right away that I, maybe like a few others, am also looking out for Stellaris it that will be a surefire buy for me. However as for the new MOO I am currently a bit torn. I watched the Quill18 gameplay and like it a lot. I never really did care about the free roaming aspect of the previous parts all that much and I played a couple of games that had sort of lanes (eg. Endless Space) that have been great. However I do like diplomacy and espionage a lot in my 4x and/or grand strategy games.

That said I would love to hear from those that might know a bit more about the planned espionage features and also about the Independent planets features mention in this thread here https://www.gog.com/forum/master_of_orion_conquer_the_stars/welcome_to_early_access_please_read. While I do have at least some sort of idea what might be possible options for espionage I have no clue about the independent plantes feature. Will it be more like the city states from Civ5 or more like a minor race/nation like in Endless Legend or EU4. And yes I know all of those would be vastly different but that is why I am asking because I have no idea what to expect. I hope to get some information about those two things because that would help me a lot in making the decission if I should or should not buy it while its still in development.

Edit: Never mind. Found something on independent planets. So it pretty much is like the city states in Civ5 or the minor Faction in Endless Legend. As for espionage I still have found nothing yet but I guess I just wait till it will arrive in the development build and see what people think about it before I go out and trigger the buy button.