Am I not getting this?
But ....
I've been mostly playing the single player version and at the highest level of difficulty. Highest level is pretty hard and sometimes frustrating (you get killed a lot in the beginning). The space battles are too similar. In elite level there is really only one way of killing of your enemy, that is taking a bomber and bombing the hell out of their critical systems. There is really no time for fancy space battles against fast tie-fighters, it just won't earn you enough points to make is. So all you do is bomb, bomb and bomb their battleships over and over again.
The ground battles are cool but won't make up for the rest.
As for the on-line version.. I've played it once and briefly ... and hated it. It could have been that i stumbled into the wrong world against the wrong players... but well, you know about first impressions. Anyway, i'm not giving up. I'm gonna give this game another chance.. but for now nothing more than a 7.5 (and that's being kind)