Been playing off and on for a few months now, I really like it. It's incredibly smooth for a beta, the only real problem I had in the alpha was a bug where certain characters (for example; the | in the TG tags) in your Steam name would cause it to crash at the end of the first turn.
It's absolutely gorgeous and the music is fantastic. The factions are varied and there are an absolute tonne of research options. Planets, heroes, etc. all have little quirks to make them stand out. There's even multiplayer, though I haven't played it myself, as you need to all be online at the same time for the combat (which is sort of 'hands-off' real-time - you give your orders at the start of combat and then watch the battle unfold).
My only real problem with it is that the fleet and combat management options are a bit limited - you can't have more than five ships in a fleet, and a fleet is controlled as a single unit. So if you enter a battle with two close-range ships, two long-range ships, and a colony ship, they'll all behave the same (i.e. the colony ship will charge into battle and get destroyed, and the long-range ships will keep flying towards the enemy until they're way inside their minimum effective range). Bigger fleets and more control over individual ships or ship types would solve this.
Other than that sole complaint, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to any sci-fi strategy fan.

Also:

> turn based rts

RTS is real-time strategy. This is TBS, or turn-based strategy, though 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) games are generally assumed to be turn-based (Sins of a Solar Empire is a notable real-time exception). The more you know!