Raagun

One of best 4x games made. It stands out with core game play complexity making room for strategic thinking and challenges. Ship designs while lack actual component placement on ship template it pays back with huge variety of them. Maybe you place fast charging hyper drive instead of fast moving one or maybe even efficient one for private sector. Everything is tracked, working marked and no "magic" teleportation of goods. To build ships you need resources(16 kinds) you need to mine them or buy them, maybe even smuggle them. Seams complicated? Well it is not. Private sector of your empire takes care of that. You are left with strategic thinking. Plan resources and secure them. Also get additional luxury resources for your planets to develop. Or even fight with aliens for super luxury ones, which are super rare and profitable. You plan fleets, attacks and diplomacy. Intelligence may be vital in survival if you fall back in tech. If all of this seams like micromanagement to you - automation is an option. Automate if it seams too tedious. AI will take care of it pretty average(not bad). Great innovation is racial victory conditions. Instead of usual 4X victory each race may have its own adding extra flavor to races. Best part is - huge galaxy is not just empires and planets. It is full of exploration encounters, special events and stuff to do besides usual 4X action. You actually feel like exploring galaxy in this game (which can be huge up to 1400 stars). And huge riches are there to be found (*cough* planet killers *cough*). Why this game is not THE best 4x - UI. Without all expansions it is horrible, with them it is just bad. After 200+ hours of playing I would say it is not buggy but just bad. Actions are hidden or simple tasks are many clicks away. Personally it does not ruin great game.