The best thing about this game is that it feels so real - you start basically at the same level of tech that the Earth is now at. Early days. You build your space station and it produces your first ships - scouts, and private ships - miners and transports. You have no FTL and it takes them a looong time to get to other planets (hint - you can speed up time). You discover a wreck, which lets you design your first FTL engine - it's slow and clunky but it's infinitely (or at least 20-30 times ) better than your reaction drives. Suddenly you start zooming about in your star system and even explore other systems. It is very exciting... Game lets you design your own units and bases, and manage your own economy if you want, move leaders around, produce ground armies etc. You can play in story mode, where some galactic events happen or just play in sandbox. There's ship capture, (if you destroy a civilization you get all their ships(and some of their race bonuses)), also you can reverse engineer ships and repair old broken ships, that you find at old testing/battle sites - you can find an abandoned powerful ship early in the game and terrorize your neighbors. There's a good modding community for the game and you can change it around, add more races, techs etc. All in all - a steal at $16
