One of my housemates plays this game a lot, and from what I have seen it looks to be a very good game. He told me a story of how he was doing a simple shipping run that he had done before. It was a fairly long flight (23jumps) so he went to watch tv whilst it was underway. when he came back he was dead.

He was a little surprised by this - the route was known to be safe, and there was little animosity with other groups. The area was pretty well patrolled, and so it was unlikely that a rohue raider or pirate would have been able to get far enough to do it. checking things out a little more gave him his answer.

His group had declared war with a nearby group. It turns out that the nearby group was doing a little better. They had managed to cut an area out of my housemate's group's territory, and captured some strategic jump gates... unfortunately ones my housemate was travelling through. He says quite a lot of this goes on - planet's change hands for example as aggressive forces move in (but need to stabilise the area to have the economy return so they can make some money). He loves the ability for players to alter the shape of the galaxy.

If it is as good as that sounds then I am definitely interested in having a deeper look at it. One other bonus is the formation of guilds - in this case business empires. You pool your money and can buy offices and assets (extra ships etc). The guys that want to trade can do that, those that want to fight can do that too. I think there is a lot of scope for a group like us that really enjoys working together.