I'm only about 4 missions into the campaign and have played one online game and a few skirmishes. I'm really impressed with this game. It looks great. I love watching the ships as they're being built and then during combat when there's small fires as they get damaged. But the key is the gameplay.

The addition of the wormholes allows for strategies you rarely get a chance to implement in most RTS games because the focus is usually only on more units at all costs. With the Jump Gates able to block off a system, you often have time to get a fast fleet into position before an attacker can get through the wormhole. It's also cool to be fighting across a number of maps since the AI handles combat really well. In another stroke of genius, they have Admirals that perform autonomously quite well which allows you to park a fleet somewhere or tell them to search and destroy and they'll do it with reasonable efficiency.

This is good stuff. Anyone with a bit of RTS fandom in their blood needs to check it out.

--Dave

I liked the demo, but the AI kept kicking my ass. I tried a bunch of different strategies but nothing seemed to work. I got sort of frustrated after that, but I do think it is probably a neat game at release. Are there a lot of people playing online Dave? Is there an original learning curve that you have to beat before you can be competitive with the AI? Kohan was like that, you had to learn how to stoke up an early econ before you could really compete.

I tied the demo. Somehow it managed to seem both hard and boring all at the same time, which really puzzled me. I didn't really like the looks of the ships, either.