Wow, pacman must have had a learning curve huh?
Completely different genres, completely unrelated. If you don't like fighter combat like say Freelander had, then you may be wasting your money, however it's definitely a game with options. You'll be wasting your time to play through the main quest, but you can start as a merchant or fleet commander just fine.
The controls take getting used to, but SD sounds more like he's talking about the BCM series by 3000AD. For the scope of the game, they're outstandingly well done and simple. I'm a natural when it comes to this sort of thing, so my five minute learning curve might be a little unreliable, but at worst it should take a couple hours to get used to it. It's fucking fantastic once you do.
It has viable fleet control and property management systems, it's the work of a few shortcuts and mouse movements to command a carrier battlegroup to wipe out a sector. The economy is an actual supply system. Some raw materials are mined from asteroids, solar farms create energy, and everything else is created through a combination of inputs in a fairly realistic system. The pricing system functions off supply and demand instead of having preset prices. A power plant that's nearly out of crystal will pay through the nose for it, while one that's full wont pay squat. You can build up your own empire with a fully functional, self sustaining system once you have a unique player headquarters that builds the one thing they don't have factories for, a shipyard. My only problem with the game is that there is no actual ai controlling the factions. You can become your own interstellar power, but you're effectively fighting against a population script that keeps the world running. With modifications you can fake a war, but I'm picky and want perfection. Combat AI is relatively good, and there are massive fleets in various places to throw yourself against, so depending on how anal you are, galactic conquest will be quite entertaining.
