I've been able to play this game on Windows 10 without too much difficulty. However, I don't see why more effort couldn't be put into modernising it. This is a pretty decent 4X game, especially considering it's over 20 years old. The AI opponents are a little bit predictable once you've played a few times, but the challenge I enjoy is building up my bases and taming the land. Speaking of the land, if you thought barbarians were scary, this game takes it to a whole new level, with the planet itself out to get you for all the ecological damage you've done since landing. Oops. Don't like the standard game rules? No problem, you can customise them to your tastes. If you're not afraid of doing a little modding, you can even create your own custom scenario with a set of rules that you like playing with. The usual old problems still exist. Mass upgrading your forces is a bit fiddly, thankfully though when the game pings you to the far right end of the design list, you can just hold down the left arrow key for a bit to go back to where you were. Also, the game likes to create lots of different unit designs for you by default, you may want to turn that feature off and just design your own. You can randomise the planet map and even the faction leader personalities, which gives it a fair bit of replayability and maybe even an extra challenge if you decide to make native life forms abundant. Overall, still worth looking at. May hold your attention for a while. But the visuals haven't aged well.
I did try and get this running on Windows 10 but no dice. Installed it on a Windows 7 machine that I usually use to run a Minecraft server and it works well. Man, this game brings back memories. Although you can play the campaign I recommend playing a few skirmishes, maybe even the tutorial if you're really new to SFC. I wholeheartedly recommend trying your luck with the Wrath of Khan scenario, it's brutal, but then what now-in scenario isn't? :) If this could be made to run on W10 I'd give it the full five stars.
