After all these years, the game's AI is still incredibly buggy. Owned ships randomly crash into stations without even notifying the player. Just happened to me while I didn't realize it, I docked 3 times, now I don't have an autosave to recover my very valuable ship and I basically lost many hours of play. And it happens again and again. What a sad state after all these years.

The absolute gold standard when it comes to autistic sandbox space sims, if that is what you fancy then look no further!

I feel it is on par with the likes of Oxygen not included, Factorio, Kerbal Space Program and the like, even if they are a totally different genres, in a sense that they allow you to do super complex stuff that takes a lot of knowledge about all the various systems these games offer, planning and preparation beforehand, and it is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rewarding to actually get stuff done lol

I've been playing this game on and off since it came out almost 20 years ago and i can safely say it is one of the most difficult games to fully master, but one that gives a back a LOT when you do.

A true diamond for sure, albeit a rough one.

There are stations that can form whole production complexes, a huuuge galaxy of many sectors that has a whole simulated economy, an ultra complex logistics system that you can set up and let loose, with hundreds of ships that ferry goods all over the place, like mining resources, feeding your factories, hauling stuff to be sold or to be stashed for later, or to be used to make more ships, or weapons to outfit these ships, and so on and so forth.

Also there's like epic space battles and stuff, a handful of different story campaigns, exploration, factions, pirates, you name it X3 got it.

But again, and this is really important - it is very hard to get into.

All in all - i love it, easy 11/10 on my scale, one of the greats, no doubt about it.

Oh, and it will run on a literal potato while still looking quite descent lol