This game may seem like the panacea to any Elite or Privateer fan, but it's just a time-trap.
You will spend about 40 hours getting to a level where you can get into a decent fighter and buy so-so equipment. To have some fat level 50 (highest level) yahoo literally blow your ship and equipment to dust in three shots because his guns are 20 times as powerful as yours and your shields are basically worthless against all that firepower.
The physics system may seem nice, fly in one direction then pivot to shoot behind you while your ship still mores in the initial direction unless you fire your engines to change that... All is nice while you're doing anything but dogfighting, because once you do, you're basically going to not be able to maneuver enough to evade fire or get out of the level 50's sights with any time or integrity to shoot back and do any worthwhile damage at all.
There's the principal flaw, which I hope will be addressed in the new version, JumpGate Evolution. Otherwise they can kiss me and my ass goodbye like they did with this 2001 version of Jumpgate.
I simply will not put real time effort, which equals money) into my level equipment and ship to have some 13 year old yahoo that LIVES in the game and has the utmost in firepower, blow me away in 2 seconds.. no way Jose, that ain't happening!