[flashman]

I have played several hours of this game, and I don't know whether it's just that I'm older now, but the gameplay only kept me interested for about five hours. (As a child I played all the Escape Velocity games for months on end.)

Everything dies far too fast for combat to have any strategic element. And (in the build I last played, anyway) trade prices are static, so you just need to find that one good trade route and run it until you're insanely wealthy.

But I am excited to see how it develops further. The potential for the main game is big enough, let alone mods and total conversions.

[resist_futility]

Had the same issues. Once you have enough ships you end up being able to buy another one each round trip of trading. There is no reason to even have weapons since the ships jump to the next system so fast. Even then if all the pirate ships decide to target your ship you can die extremely fast with the best shields available. So I end up removing all the weapons from the new ship and just adding more cargo space. Then reloading when I am basically instant killed.