[Puke]

gonegold links to several good previews. while i think the whole 800x600 thing is retarded, and the irc chat with the developer displayed complete asinine immaturity on behalf of the developer, the game its self shows promise.

it looks like they kept the cultural / political system that they had originally proposed, where different government types can do different things with their domestic / forign policy.

it looks like the orion senate gives you alot of international relations and trade options, which sounds cool.

it looks like planets have alot of detail

i like the whole warp lanes idea, and it looks like they kept that.

on the down side, it looks like you have to play head to head, no emailing turns. no auto-resolving combat, as far as i can tell. fleet combat looks to be structured well though. build fleets, and give orders to them rather than to ships.

on the weapons front, there are missiles, fighters, short and long range weapons. thats all you REALLY need in life. a balance between short and long range, and a few different types of things to create a rock-paper-scisiors effect. stealth / ecm is supposed to play a big role in those ships being able to get up close to use the short range weapons.

no word on mod-ability, or customization outside of the in-game options. without the ability to play via email, i dont know if i will ever get to play this one multiplayer. without the ability to customize or mod the game, i dont know if i will play it longer than a month or two. might be one of those that you keep coming back to after periods of shelf time.