If you're into this type of game, you will love this one. A must have for any "virtual sailor".
The new "research" system will seem a little daunting at first, but you will love it once understood. Money now solely goes into researching items, which once done, yields infinite amounts of that item. However, meeting the requirements in order to research an item can be quite a challenge. Some items have to be "discovered" first. The downside is that "farming" the items takes a while and can become tedious at times.
There are three possible mission paths, each of which have their own specific items to be discovered, which boosts the replay value way up.
Ship design has been greatly improved and sped up with new useful tools such as saving a "blueprint" of certain designs to make copies of later that you can tweak depending on mission specifics.
This game is definitely an improvement over the last two, but be sure you have plenty of time to devote to it as it can consume large amounts of it.