In case anyone is interest, Freelancer went gold
http://www.microsoft.com/games/freelancer/
And i tihnk GalCiv has a lot going for it, off course, you can say they've stolen ideas from SE4, but any game steals ideas from previous games, especially if they are good ideas
The strong point of GalCiv is it's AI, and the dedication from the developers. They already scheduled 1 year after the release, to work on updates and such, now you may think they're just releasing a glorified beta then, but imo, if it doesn't have any gamestopping bugs, and you get what it says on the box (*cough*CIV3 MP*cough*), then it's a full game. All the updates that will be added are bonusses.
Plus, the hardware requirements aren't that high, probably similar to SE4's reqs.