Not very big on the planet development, were they?
I wish I had known this before I bought the game. Not really a space exploration and expansion game - more of space extermination game (i.e. very light on "fog of war", limited initial starship range, etc). You pretty much start the game knowing where every star system is, how many planets each system has, and after the briefest scouting mission, which planets you will be playing with for the rest of the game.
The beauty of the beginning of each MOO game:
1) Heavy fog of war
2) You had to explore star systems before you knew how many / the makeups of their planets
3) Extremely limited range of initial star ships
4) Once a ship was launched into hyper space, you could not turn it around until it reached its destination...
