Deeper than your average RTS game
Theres also a splinter faction called the Harkbackhood which is actually trying to go back to its original home from which the exodus faction left, this faction actually uses the scourge to its own advantage, and then theres the empire which dont want to merely abandon a planet and go to the next but establish a permenant empire.
The gameplay is again unique, each faction relies upon nano bots to level a area of your choosing into a smooth plane for which to set your 'frame' down on, as you expand you can smooth more areas of terrain down with the nano bots to build structures, to build units you have some basic troops and combine them to form better and better squads to attack the enemy, eventually during the better battles/skirmish modes entire levels will be levelled of with two players trying frantically to capture enemy buildings (by knocking out their power supplies to sections of their base and then building your own power structure to assume control over unpowered buildings) and detroy their army and frame. Each factions has its own 'ultimate' units which can inflict serious damage on both the enemy and the terrain.
The singleplayer campaign has some memroable moments, some very exciting battles and afteer you complete a map its avalible to select in multiplayer/skirmish which is a nice touch i guess, the story is quite interesting and presented in a good sci fi way, the sound is decent and as i said earlier seem strange but you'll find that it suites the game.
The graphics are spectacular, certainly better than most other RTS games and i had this game first of all when i was playing it on a GeFroce 4 MX 128mb card and thats pretty bad card and this game still looked fantastic.
So whats wrong with the game? well some missions are pretty unforgiving and after a while you can feel it can get repetitive, unfortunately thats the same with any RTS game. Multiplayer isnt exactly alive and kicking which will be dissapointing if you want to play alot of multiplayer but its still a good game, a real gem of a game infact, and a great shame it wasnt welcomed as much as something generic and boring say Ground Control 2.
A real shame.
But at least you can get it on budget, (10 dollars in usa, five pounds in UK on sold out label)
Warning contains star force!