[QuarianRex]

I bought the full Version of the game just before I found out about SEIV. Gotta say that I liked it. It has a nice progression of tech and the gameplay was pretty fluid. I found that the orders system was quite nice and cut down a lot of the micro-management (which can be a pain in a real time game).

The thing that I liked the best though was the way that the weapon systems were handled. Each had its own design characteristics, firing arcs, etc., and this made the choice of what weapons you would equip more interesting than just going for the highest damage.

I also enjoyed how they handled weapon research, with every weapon system after the first incurring an additional 50% research penalty. This forced you to specialize instead of the usual tactic of grabbing the best of everything. This tended to give each race its own distinct fleet.

On the down side, it was shareware and so the gameplay was rather limited (you can only conquor the galaxy so many times with the same, somewhat limited, set of tech). I heard that they were coming out a new Version that was going to be comercially published. I haven't looked in on it since SEIVGold came out but I wouldn't mind seeing how it is with a little more polish.