Beat. The game started off absurdly easy because the AI does not keep units with different movement speeds together, so they separate their forces into waves. This strategy worked for most of the game; hold up and kite to lure the faster units away from the slower ones. There was only 1 level where this did not work because the enemy had more units and a space station to build new units. It would have been doable with a refueler to keep your ships alive. The refuelers in the later levels made the game much easier. I found that sending scouts off to the flanks would divert many enemies to chase after them, sometimes to the point of ignoring your other ships that were in range to be attacked. I abused this heavily in 1 level to destroy quite a few enemy units without counterattacks. Much of the strategy was calculating movement and attack ranges to keep my units just out of range to lure the enemy close so I get first strike. Then outranging and focusing down each ship, usually finishing them off with a short range or damaged unit. Also keeping vulnerable units out of range because the AI is very good at focus firing and picking off damaged units. When I had space stations I either built refuelers (if needed), light predators (the best 1 turn ship) if I needed ships immediately, or heavy marauders (most powerful ship) if I could last the 4 turns to build. The final mission was interesting. I found a cloaking device and gave it to a heavy marauder, planning to have it wreck all the ships with less range, and then camping the enemy 5 range ships at max range with a refueler. This did not work because the enemy ships have attack triggers that went off when the cloaked ship was close enough. I managed to wipe out their light fighters, heavy destroyers and everything they built at their space station without difficulty. Then I had to deal with their huge fleet of like 9 heavy marauders equipped with movement upgrades. If they bothered to attack they probably would have wiped out my fleet. 5 range, ton of shields, high attack and higher movement than most other ships because of that movement upgrade. I managed to figure out their exact trigger point so my cloaked ship could move in, end turn, attack when the enemies moved into range, then move past the trigger for them to reset back to starting positions. Took a while, but my cloaked ship soloed them all, with heals in between. Then I took their space station, used a warp to get another heavy marauder there, built 2 more and then 2 refuelers. So I killed the motherships with 4 heavy marauders, each at max range with a refueler healing every turn. The enemies would not even attack on their turns. Then I did the 3 secret missions. Barely beat checkers. Owned chess. Failed invaders, but I did not want to play that anyway.

The game was buggy for me, sometimes freezing on the enemy turn or weird things happening. Like my space station not generating my units but giving the enemy a new unit outside the playable area? Or my units suddenly changing into enemy units. Resetting and starting the level over with the password fixed it. I had to restart most of the later levels. No idea if that was an emulator problem or not. Otherwise the game was decent. I quickly turned off animations. Had to use turbo speed constantly because of the painfully slow scrolling. Later I changed ship icons into letters because too many ships look similar to the point where I often had to go into the menu to see what they were. Minimal replayability, and there was no sense of progression because losses do not matter at all for the next mission. I did not like the stats behind the ships because they only have small differences and some are clearly redundant if not outright inferior. It made me wonder why some ships were ever designed in the first place. Both the light scout and light fighter have the highest move but suck at fighting. The fighter has slightly better combat stats while the scout can find power ups. I don't see why both exist. And then there is the light marauder that loses a couple move for that sweet 4 attack range, yet still only costs 1 turn to build. Light fighters are really only good for finishing off damaged units, and scouts can do that too. I don't see the point of building weak fast units that don't have enough range to avoid counterattacks.

Then the medium fighter is slightly stronger than the light predator while losing 1 move and costing twice the turns to build. And the heavy scout, which is slower than the light. Why would you ever build that over a light scout (which is better at scouting) or the med fighter/light predator (which is better at combat)? The heavy fighter has low range and moves. High melee attack does not make up for it because good luck getting into melee range with that slow speed; terrible unit. Then there are a bunch of very similar capital ships. The heavy predator has less combat stats and takes 1 less turn to build than the heavy destroyer. They are so similar, why have both? The light marauder is like artillery early on because it is the only 4 range unit for a while, but its high melee stat does not offset the lower movement speed; the heavy destroyer is just superior. Then there is the light destroyer which has less combat stats, the same move, and less range than the heavy. Why does this ship exist? It sucks. The light and heavy cruisers are just as bad, stuck with only 3 range and low movement. They have nothing whatsoever as a tradeoff, so why do they exist? The heavy marauder is the best ship with 5 range, and is the artillery ship, but also has good shields and high melee. The slave transport is useless but has good flavor, even if the mission where you are supposed to escort them did not penalize for getting them destroyed. The ship transport is a good way to move the slower ships around.

6.5/10

If I was going to design a spaceship strategy game, I would make the ships more specialized with clear roles. 1 scout. A fast light fighter than can only attack in melee but does not have the power to threaten capital ships. A bomber for wrecking capital ships in melee but that loses to fast ships. A heavy fighter or fighter/bomber that counters bombers while also threatening capital ships, but losing to the light fighter. Then a series of capital ships based upon a balance of mobility, defense and offense. The balanced ship would be the cruiser, a great general purpose ship. Focusing on mobility would give the destroyer, a ship that is best for seeking out and attacking weak ships (like fighters, bombers and stealth). Focusing on offense would give the battleship, a long range artillery unit similar to the marauders in this game only weak in melee. Focusing on defense would give the dreadnought, a ship that takes a lot of punishment and would be like a ship of the line doing broadsides at close range. Then 3 more hyper specialized ships that put 1 feature into the toilet to focus on the other 2. Dropping mobility would give the defense/assault/mother ship; the ship that is too slow to do anything but attack or defend a stationary target, but would beat any other ship. Dropping offense would give a support ship, like transport, carrier, healer or buffer of some kind. Dropping defense would give the stealth ship that would function like a submarine for hit and run raiding.