The reviews said you couldn't control your (carefully designed) ships in combat. This is a major turn-off for me. At least in Space Empires in simultaneous games you still have the combat simulator.
In a nutshell, it's ridden with bugs, unfinished features and bad development decisions. Also, during the time I followed their forums it was a question of official support with patches too. Game appears to try to capture gameplay from 'Stars!' but ultimately fails because of all the mentioned shortcomings.