Lets get one thing straight right away: I can absolutely understand the grief that Moo1/2 fans have with this game. It´s not a worthy sequel of the previous 2 games. Does it make this game a bad game? Hell no! I really like this game, as I´m not a fan of MoO 1/2. You are looking for funny conquest space game, where you quickly build an empire and wage epic battles in space? Go on and leave, this probably isnt your choice... You are looking for a more "simulation" type of game? Maybe you are right here. Lets have a look on the gameplay. Turnbased, Yup! There are multiple layers of building your empire, and they can consume a decent amount of time. You should consider around 40hours+ for one game easily. First of all you build your colony ships and colonize the universe. Therefor you select a solar system, then select a planet, then select the construction queue. Reminds you of Endless Space? Yes its similar here. In the same production queue you can build major buildings on the planet, like shipyards, stock exchanges etc. But to make a planet produce something you have to go even deeper. Into the area layer of the planet, here you can assign areas to production types like minerals, industry, farming etc. You only got to assign them once BUT with 250 stars on a map each having 4 planets.... You also control research by two things. First you assign some sliders to research percentage, then trough your planets. More planets focused on research = faster research. Beside that research is quite passive as they progress in "tiers". When a tier is done you might get some new parts, buildings, shiptypes and so on. But not every tier grants something at all. Ship design: you design ships with a classic mass/part system. A corvette can have a certain amount of weight added to it and every part has some weight. The variety is huge as most parts even have upgrades. Combat is poor... you "command" fleets RTS style... move them from A to B thats it... Missiles appear to be OP
