The first series was fun, but got rather boring in endgame because the only thing you were doing was hitting the end turn button over and over. The random encounters were wickedly hard in the beginning and I remember putting the game off for awhile because it just pissed me off. A little more micomanagement for planets, better triple monitor support, better fleet management while in battle (close to encounter didn't prevent your long range missile cruisers from keeping missile distance), lower the wicked strength of randoms when starting. Pixel based damage was amazing, The ability to target areas on enemy ships is fantastic. Get rid of the generic ship designs while in the "design" phase and the generic tech tree diagrams. SotS was amazing gameplay, with a few tweaks to number 2 could make it outstanding.
