Close to the greatest Star Trek game ever made. Strategy fans would probably still like it.
The game definitely confused me at first, especially considering how young I was when I first played. The great thing is that you can change the difficulty to however you want, place yourself wherever in technology advancement so it is not as confusing. You can basically create your own learning curve.
The micromanagement takes a while, especially understanding energy management, ship production, population, research, and intelligence. Once you get a hang of it, though, the game flows, and it is very free form.
The races have tons of unique capabilities, which adds a fantastic element to the game. For example, Cardassians have facilities that give outstanding intelligence like sabotage, the Federation far excels in research, the Klingons can get more labor and have the strongest warriors but lower morale, the Romulans have cloaking ships (which is a huge advantage) and good espionage, while the Ferengi can just raid and trade and make a whole crap-load of money.
There's much, much more to the game, but it's really not too complex, and it's sad that they actually haven't made a sequel to it, because I would think about buying it right away, and it might just help revive Star Trek video games. Who knows...either way, if you see it at a bargain bin, think real hard about it. You'll like it.