It is a strategy game that I played with for countless hours on end. So you are a general of a fledgling rebel force, fighting against both the weakened Empire and other ambitious generals (up to ten generals, human or PC). You can start either with one star system in your territory or several, depending on which game scenario you choose at the beginning of the game. There are 26 star systems in your sector, labeled A-Z, and your want to take as many as you can.
Within each star system, you can build up your forces, whether its warships, stealthships, missiles, troops, factories, defenses, or you can even build more planets! And, when you think you have a force large enough, you can invade any star system you like in the sector, without needing to take territory in-between. However, you are limited by the travel time between stars, so if you invade a star on the other side of the sector, you better hope that your enemies don't pick you up on their radar and have a surprise waiting for you! Play is turn-based, so that travel time, production, and other gameplay elements happen on a turn-by-turn basis.
A lot of the strategy and gameplay go into attempting
to balance your resources and time, because you can only produce so much stuff and move so far per turn. Each game has a set number of turns that is defined before gameplay, and the major goal is to have a higher score than your opponents at the end of the game. You get a higher score primarily through how many stars you have under your control, but also from the size of your fleet, how many planets you have, the number of factories, etc. Conquest is key, but you can send various other kinds of missions to your enemy's stars, such as spy ship intelligence gathering, attrition missions that kill then return home, or (my favorite) resource raid missions that pirate on a star and take the booty back home to your star.
The game also makes room for random events (you can toggle random events on or off at the beginning) and for such things as the morale of your forces (that is, your ships will fight more effectively and your citizens are less likely to rebel with higher morale). Graphically, it's a game made for Windows 3.1, and as such the graphics aren't as good as you might expect from later games. Graphics are simple: you have stars that are color coded starburst symbols and planets that are color coded earth-looking balls. Your ships are small ship-shaped pixels that look like shrunken Star Wars fighters. They are simple, but effective, and I think it makes the game look cleaner overall. I think it is a very complex, good strategy game, and I had fun with it.
