• I could say it is known as "the Dwarf Fortress of 4x games,! but that probably still doesn't man anything to anybody, so I'll try to say a few words about how the game works:
• Within a system, ships accelerate to their maximum speed instantly, but travel between systems works through jump points (via jump drive on a ship or a jump gate), similar to the strings of ES.
• Unlike most 4X games, you need to actually mine resources to be used in your factories and refineries, and they are decidedly finite.
• Colonies, fleets, ships, and even research projects can be given leaders, which could be analogous to ES heroes (and the forumites and the Amplitude staff There is even a minister of community manageme... I mean, of public relations.)
• Though there are no fixed hulls, all ships can be designed by putting components on them: Engines, sensors, damage control modules, colony modules, mining tools and fuel harvesters, cloaking devices, armor, shields, anti-missile systems and CIWS point defense, Railguns and Gausscannons, lasers and particle beams, (potentially multi-stage) missiles, and fighters... (How fortunate that the three weapon types match up)
• Many of these modules are designed by the player from sub-components as well.
• Civilian shipping companies create their own ships and their own mining operations, and you can let them handle a lot of your transport tasks.
• Planets with somewhat suitable gravity can be terraformed by adding or removing the appropriate gases to the atmosphere to make it breathable and adjust the temperature.
• Depending on game options, you can come across precursor ships, extra-dimensional aliens that wiped out the precursors (which would make a fine stand-in for the Virtuals), or a ravenous hive fleet (Cravers!).
  
  

This looks like it could have been fun, I just voted for Hissho too... Welp, I guess I'll go see what this is about.

Given the renewed interest, I might get back to this, though it will probably be after Gamescom.

gamescom is over (Isn't it?), when do you start?

As soon as I can get it working properly. I still have some trouble with the custom start throwing error messages, and we don't want to start in the Sol System, do we?