I tried really really hard to like this game but .....
First off, I enjoy turn based games. I liked the total war series, I liked the age of wonders series and I even liked galactic civilizations 1.
Pro: You can build and customize your ships and although the ship models are fairly limited greatly enjoyed designing my own ship classes.
Yea my pros end about there.....
Cons:
The Campaign: It is very bland, the story is not original, and basically I got bored after a couple missions. The missions were basically just smaller versions of the skirmish mode with a weak storyline.
The interface: The controls for the game were not user friendly. To make a fleet and move it to where you want without it falling apart, good luck. The ships just don't want to stick together and it's really hard to tell sometimes what ships are part of what fleet if all the ships and fleets were in one hex.
Gameplay, with emphasis on skirmish: This is basically the core part of the game. You have a skirmish with multiple computers to conquer the galaxy by researching how to become a god (literally), by spreading your cultural influence, or by blowing everything up.
The problems are numerous.
The technology tree is the worst tech tree design I have ever seen. It is not intuitive at all what things you must research in order to achieve what task for example what things must I research to quickly build up an economy. Another question might be if you're trying to rush attack and conquer to win is what techs should I research to build a powerful ship. To fully demonstrate how poorly designed the tree is, to research laser from 1 to 2, the description doesn't tell you how much the laser will improve, for example how much cheaper or more expensive will laser 2 be to equip on your ships as compared to laser 1 and how much more damage it does. How would you find this out? Research it, equip it on your ship and be pleasantly surprised....
Have fun customizing your planets, all you'll end up doing is placing the same 4 structures on each planet and that is the end to planet customization. What 4 structures you ask? Market, lab, industry and an elective.
If you play this and you keep asking yourself how did the AI suddenly get so rich or how did the AI suddenly get such a powerful fleet so fast. Well don't ask me cause I don't know although I have played this game for over 5 hours. I don't know because as I said before the tech tree is not intuitive so I don't know what to research in what order to accomplish what task. To figure these things out, go on some forums and do a lot of trial and error or pray you get lucky and find the right combination.
Lastly the ship battles auto resolve. If you want you can watch the battles auto resolve although it's not very interesting. Gone are the dreams of putting a fleet in a nebula to ambush the enemy fleet or position long range siege ships behind your forward fighters. You won't be doing any of that.....
Finally the early, mid game strategy will consist of trying to find and colonize planets before your enemies do and pray you find more class 10+ planets than they do cause if you don't have fun late game.... What else will you end up doing early and late game? Pressing the end turn button a lot.....
So in conclusion I see a lot of potential for a fun game and a lot of potential strategies. The problem is non of those strategies are intuitive and thus the potential for a fun game goes down the drain. The learning curve for this game is so steep it's at a 90 degree angle and having a poor interface doesn't help.