If you ever wanted to play a Freelancer type of game online with potentially thousands of players, this is for you...
Crafting: You can modify or create any ship component, even if you don't have the skill to actually use it.
Character Leveling: The character leveling is skill and tactics based. You earn points that you can throw into several skills that will help you use better cockpits, weapons, engines, wings, hulls, etc. You also gain tactics points where you can choose to level certain tactics that will help you get out of a rough spot in combat.
Trading: I am not yet sure if there is an actual economy, as I have barely progressed past Apo Kata (the second station in the story line missions). It seems that it would be possible to trade from station to station, I am just not there yet. You can trade with other players, and you can sell loot that you have salvaged from dead ships.
Missions: The story missions are amazing. Nice dialog, nice cut-scenes. You can tell they spent most of their time in this area. The missions from the mission board are also very fun and there are a lot of them. They also have their own little stories, which can be interesting.
Voice-over acting: The voice actors are pretty good. They are sometimes better than the voice actors in the newest X series. They spent some good resources coming up with some pretty good voice actors.
Scenery: This game is beautiful! In some sectors, I would say it is every bit as beautiful as the X3 series. In other areas, I would compare it with Freelancer (which also looked fairly decent).
Bugs: There are a few bugs that prevent from completing some of the side missions. There is a way to report bugs in-game, but it's not so easy to find.
Support: There is an in-game email support system, but you have to click into a few dialogs to find the link. The support references on their home page don't exist. All of the community forum links are dead links. There is no way that I can find to contact them from their site. They make mention that they prefer support forum posts for game problems, but there is no support forum.
Free to play? Absolutely. This game, so far, has been 100% free to play. I wish they would charge a small subscription fee because reading some news from the past year, it sounds like they are having financial issues. This game deserves a small subscription fee. It is fun and addicting. I would give (in its current state) $5 per month.
Conclusion: I don't think they have a large player base at all. I am trying to get the word out, and I hope they improve their support. I don't know how much content is in the game yet, or even if I am in the full universe. I am progressing through the story missions and new sectors are opening up all the time. Because of the lack of support, I had to cap this game at 7.0. I would have given no more than 7.5 based on the bugs.
This game is very fun and addicting, and I wish this team well!