Just picked this up.   Looks great.    

Late April, early May? It's tentative!

I bought it and played a couple of hours yesterday(beta), I have also watched Das lets play series on youtube. This game is HEAVILY inspired by MOO II. You can see and feel it everywhere. That is a great thing. I have not found a space game to suit me in years, but this one could be it.

I cannot believe that this gem comes from a tiny kickstarter of just a few thousand dollars in 2011.

At first I really didn't "get" this game. I think the amount of fun is very limited in the start. But then you get past those very initial hurdles and BAM, 4 hours later I was glued to the computer drawing power lines across a cruiser. I can't save or load at the moment (bug) but I can only imagine what the late game is like.

I love that there aren't a million little techs we have to unlock. I think I only had some 15-20 techs after that 4 hour game. Few but extremely significant, makes it more about choice and less about filling in boxes for what to get next.

As someone who's deepest 4x experiences he's ever really enjoyed have been Sins of a Solar Empire and the first Sword of the Stars and their expansions and mods, do you guys think I would enjoy this game?

I think you will enjoy it. Its not extremely complex (on the surface at least). You can just throw yourself in there and play. After a while you will have to learn more deep stuff, but its like playing CIV in that you learn each time you play.

I'd suggest it isn't a matter of whether the AI "shows no mercy." (Which is in case usually a euphemism for "Hey, kid, we *dare* you to beat our game, though you have to buy it, first!") It's a matter of whether the AI has an extremely good rules set to deal with all sorts of contingencies, or whether it gets all sorts of perks that the human player doesn't have.

Playing it now.  At first my Norton's were flagging it as a naughty but the developer must have figured out why and fixed it.  So now Norton likes it just as much as I do.  And yes I see this game as a great Step 1.  Step 2 is kind of the skies the limit thing as this developer is very prolific.  He's getting good feed back from early users like some guy named DevildogFF.  There is no telling where he will take this game.  Maybe that's some of the fun.

I'm curious about buying the pre-order, but dunno. I rarely like RTS games. For those of you who've bought the pre-order, how does the RTS work?

Ok thanks. I didn't like Sins because of its RTS aspect.

So i bought it...at last. 

Started my first game as Draylok, and well, its pretty complex, when compared to Sins. Seems i am going to need to read the tutorial after all, or watch some of those youtube videos, as i have almost zero experience with this kind of games (beyond Sins i only played Ascendancy and Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain, and that was ages ago).

The game looks nice however and the interface is quite good - it does not look that overwhelming. The problem is the underlying mechanics - i could see how to colonise planets right away, i just had no idea, which ones are worth colonising (with all those barren, average, poor etc... monikers) and how many to colonise them/how fast to do it. I mean on Sins, its pretty straightforward, obviously in the end the target is to have as much worlds as possible, but in the beginning, you cant colonise too much, or the underdeveloped planets with negative income would stall your economy. I have no idea so far, whether there is a similar system with StarDrive or not. 

A lot of 4x games tend to have you make this balancing act you have to manage.

More or less it comes with learning the game and experience will you find optimal expansion strategies. Of course maps are usually. be randomized so that you'll have to adapt.

Which can be half the fun in a 4x game in that you actually have to think about what you're doing.

Thanks for your responses.

So far, i definitely dont like it more than Rebellion. The thing that bothers me most, is this time pausing/speeding up/slowing down thing. I am not used to that and never ever do that in Sins. It seems you gotta do it here, as the teching takes ages, but i just cant help myself, speeding the game up gives me a feeling i should be doing something, but instead i just watch the game passing by and me slowly losing... i mean you obviously have to know, when is the right time to speed things up. But i kinda bought the game for its RTS nature, i would not do that, if it was turn-based for sure.

Oh yeah, going to read those tutorials now.