This the best it gets for pirates games. Lots of little games blended into a alrger enjoyable one. The only downside is that the individual sub-games can't be adjusted to differant skill levels so if I want harder fights I lose on the dancing with the daughter. Otherwise this was a quick rebuy for me (I had it on CD already) Now with GOG I don't need the CD and make adjustments to my computer to play.
I have not found another that allowed tactical combat on ships you design yourself. All current ones are auto-combat that you basically just watch. This game also allows you to travel anywhere your design allows. All others confine you to designated space lanes so chock points are fairly easy to set up whereas with this what you thought was a choke point might not be because the enemy has a further ranged than you do. Highly recommended. Too bad designers today do not know hwo to make a simular open ended game like this.
I had this game when it first came out and GOG has faithfully recreated it to play on Win10. You have six races to choose from with each race having unique weapons and ships. The only common thread between them is phasers. The mission range from very easy to very hard and you can also adjust how hard the AI will be from easy to extra hard. If you join the special groups the missions become hard rather rapidly and folow a story otherwise you just engage in random battles. Each battle grants you experience and points. You use the points to change/ipgrade your crew/resupply your ship. Some missions give few points others much more. The higher your rank the more points and the harder the missions. I enjoy these one more than the ones whiched followed which I also have on CDs but they won';t work on Win10. When upgrading your ship you have to be careful because your crew doesn't follow you so you might lose your legendary one. The game is a computerized version of the baord game of the same name and uses some races you might never heard of before as two of the ones you can choose but they exist extensively in the board games along with the Ziniti which only appeared once in the cartoon Star Trek series., Very additive but paln as much as a hour per battle since they can get very involved.
