I see they have an ad up for it (ahh the glory of non-sub). Anyone played it?
I have played it a few times. I'm a fan of RTS, but this is just too much.
You get giant fleets with thousands of ships and there can be 50 or so planets, all of which you need to manage. Builing infastructure, defense, researching, exploring, building, protecting, expanding and much more, even before you get to do too much combat.... and then there is the space pirates you have to pay off to not attack you. (which you can use to win the game easily).
When you first play, you learn that the AI amasses a giant fleet before you can, they have more upgrades than you do, more planets and more resources. And when you first play a harder difficulty, you realize they are still way better than you.
So, when you finally get the hang of it, you realize, it is one giant stupid game of cat and mouse. You are battling against an enemy, and if you have a larger fleet, they just run away! EVERY TIME! So you have to chase them around the board (or whatever) trying to kill their ships.
There are few good battles though, but by the time they happen, you have such giant fleets that the ships are all jumbled and are impossible to place strategically. It is on such a massive scale, you can't even take-in the entire battle. Micro-managing your units becomes impossible because when you play with 10 or more planets, you will have multiple battles going at once, with multiple fleets around the galaxy engaging different enemies, while you are having to build and research and upgrade your planets all at the same time. All this extra BS makes micro-managment impossible.
Personally, micro-management is one of the best part of a RTS game. Thats why I like Chess!
The point is. This game should not be called an RTS... it should be CMS, a Cat-and-Mouse Strategy game.