The Basics
Tactical turn-based strategy...in SPAAAAAAAAACE! You need to pick a side, figure out what your team's motivations and desires are, and then hit the space lanes, going forth and blowing things up. You have a few basic ship types at your disposal, like capital ships, scouts, fighters, etc. with sub-types of each. You improve their core abilities by class, and all upgrades apply retroactively, so let’s say you wanna improve the basic weapons on your Rangers, or the armor on a Juggernaut; upgrading in this way immediately applies to all Rangers, all Juggernauts, and so on. You can also equip individual ships with up to three specific items that confer extra bonuses, usually at the expense of something else, so, for instance, increasing your shield capacity may mean spending extra Energy resources to field that ship.
The Story & Flow
You pick your faction and send out your small fleet to go harvest resources, fight off pirates (or help them), escort allies, etc. You use the goodies you scavenge to expand and improve your fleet as a whole, while individual ships level up as you play (all EXP is shared among surviving vessels that took part in a given fight). You can also take advantage of some holographic training exercises to get your underlings some safe EXP without the threat of getting owned.
Controls
Point & click for everything: Making simple, relatively clear menu choices in your home base and in dialogues; to move around the sector map in combat, choose targets, select attacks, etc. Straightforward and easy to understand.
Graphics & Sound
Good! Just enough variety in ship designs to make them identifiable from range. You can zoom out to see a good chunk of any given battlefield (fog of war included) when desired, or you can zoom in far enough so that you can see your crafts' engines firing and the detail on the armor plating. Also, the game uses an XCOM-style cover system (none vs partial vs full), complete with little shield icons that clearly indicated which ones apply from your current position. Pretty much all cover can be blown up with high explosives, so just keep that in mind. The sound is excellent, and the voice acting is fantastic; it sounds like the voice actors were actually paid to do their work, which – even these days – sometimes feels more rare than it should be.
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