While this is a terrific game concept with some nice features, it is far more work than play. The core of the game is a standard 4X space empire builder, with colony management, a complex tech tree, tactical space and  ground combat, espionage, and diplomacy. But there is no centralized  display of colony status. A building must be supplied with both power and  workers in order to operate, and if it doesn't have enough of either, it  will simply shut down and the game gives you no warning or announcements.  You are forced to pause the game every few months and personally inspect  every single colony to discover these problems. But the tech system is even  worse, and has not been improved from IG1. There are three types of tech,  and so you have to have three types of labs. But you can only research one  invention at a time, so while you're developing a new hyperdrive in your  ship labs, your ground unit and colony facility labs are sitting idle,  sucking up your colony's power and workers. If you can't afford that waste,  and most of the time you can't, you have to once again personally remember  where you placed each one of up to 30 labs, go to the colony display for  each planet on which you have a lab, and turn the idle ones off, one at a  time. If you decide to develop a new building next, you have to go around  and turn off all the ship labs and turn all the building labs on again. And  I don't have room here to go into the game's futile diplomacy system, or  the sluggish screen redraw, or the constant nagging interruptions by  messages regarding random events and spies demanding orders. No offense to  the other reviewers here, but only a hardcore strategy addict with a fetish  for micromanagement could enjoy this game. I returned it four days after I  bought it.