There's a bit of DLC about rogue factions or something that's supposed to do something to randomize pirate behavior, I think, but all it does is send the pirates after you every time they deploy. Honestly otherwise it's not bad.
I considered being a lot more verbose with this review, but hungyeung has said much of what I was going to. He's absolutely right, the star systems were copy-pastes of each other, the gameplay pretty much ignored everything but combat. There is one thing he forgot to mention that's stuck with me since I bought the game just because of the sheer laziness it shows. On (if I recall frequent) occasion, when you were near one of these cut and paste jumpgates in one of these cut and paste star systems you'd get a bit of dialogue between two pilots. Pilot One: "Look at that ship! That ship is awesome!" Pilot Two: "I've never seen anything like it! That must be really expensive!" This encounter would feature the same two (male) voice actors, regardless of the species the pilots belonged to, and regardless of how that species' voices would be otherwise presented. This included systems populated entirely by Thule, who were exclusively female, save for apparently these two pilots who were twentysomething surfer dudes despite looking exactly like all the other Thule. Also also, whoever gave the lead male VA his lines should've slapped him. In response to some alien describing, "the schismatic Thule." the main character asks, "The 'Charismatic' Thule?" In what dialect of English do schismatic and charismatic sound anything alike?! I know the recording probably wasn't done ensemble, but that almost makes it worse. YOU HAD THE SCRIPT RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU! THE DIRECTOR HAD A COPY OF THE SCRIPT RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM OR HER! One of the greatest Elder Scrolls memes comes from the accidental inclusion of an unprompted do-over by Linda Kenyon into actual game dialogue, but Ascaron just took the botched reading, said, "Good enough!" and went with it. So yeah, in conclusion, poorly made as hungyeung said, but also tremendously lazy.
One of the mechanics the description DOESN'T mention is that no matter what, no matter who has a bounty on them or you even have one at all, the pirates will ALWAYS raid your systems. This means that you have to harden every system as you take it or you're throwing ships away. This in turn leaves you moving very slowly while the other powers get to build up. Then by the time your three or four meager systems with their tiny incomes are built up enough so they can defend themselves a gigantic fleet that you used to see in the mid- or end-game phase, with capital ships galore and fifty or so frigates and cruisers, come rampaging through your slowly established systems and because you've been hardening everything as you go you have no fleet to protect against them. It effectively makes the game impossible to survive unless maybe you're a hardcore player who knows every mechanic perfectly or you cheat. If I wanted that kind of mechanic I would've stuck with an older title where the NPCs all come after you and seem to know exactly where you are from the start like Tiberian Sun or Starcraft.
Do you have any idea how annoying it is to hear a bell toll and an upset-sounding voice cry, "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!!!" once every few seconds because it triggers EVERY. SINGLE. TIME one of your units gets hit by someone new? I do. I happen to like playing games with the sound on, but I can't do that, because hearing, "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!!!" four times a second (because I like keeping scouting units busy) completely spoils any benefit having the sound on would provide. Why whoever wrote this game didn't think to add an option to disable that alarm specifically is beyond me. On the bright side I suppose it limits play time to however long you can tolerate it without getting a massive headache.
