Enjoyable combat, no crap.
Did you Play MOO 1-3 for the joy of ship design and combat? BUY THIS GAME.
as other games in this genra have gotten bogged down in burocratic levels of detail and control of your empire (and requireing you to delve that deep to have a fighting chance) SotS's design team set back and asked itself : "Why do people play this kind of game?"
War is not the anser, war is the question, HELL YES! is the anser.
fleet to fleet engagements, thats what people played them for. so SotS's team focused on the Space Admeral aspect of the genra.
They also asked about the 2 other complaints of players. "why is the tech tree alwase the same?" and "why does everyone use the same FTL drive?"
so here we have a simple economy you can get to do what you want with ease, an enjoyable (dispite a few issues) combat system in which you can design your own ships. to top all this off, the tech tree is slightly random each game, and each race has its own unique FTL drive. this makes each race play diffrently, and makes fighting the Liir totaly diffrent from fighting the Humans.
Side Breakdown:
Humans- FTL via warp lanes, very fast, but has choke points.
Tarka- FTL with the simple warp drive (think MOO), middle ground on speed and acessablity.
Hiver- FTL Via Teleporter gates, Slow to put in place (no ftl out to a place the first time) but IMMENSE speed in transet.
Liir- FTL warp with a twist, faster when further from stars/less stars. (you get close to places FAST, but must spend 1-2 turns getting the last part of the way)
Balence in this has impressed me, each side can match techs with the others, and each FTL method has its own ups and downs.