Beyond Protocol

The Good
I'll put this here as a disclaimer, I work for Dark Sky Entertainment, but I played the game long before I was hired. So, I write this as a gamer, not an employee.

There are so many facets to running an empire.

You can customize all of your technology to give you the strategy you want. This means developing your own armor, engines, radar, shields, and weapons, and then creating a custom layout ship and fitting everything on there. That goes for buildings as well.

You can hire undercover agents to run missions like destroy facility, assassinate governor, or steal ally list. You may also want to hire a few to guard your own empire so others can't do that to you.

You can trade just about anything, a custom power generator, a player's military score, an alloy made from 3 or 4 of the 105 minerals in the game, or an entire base/fleet.

You can create custom formations, set complex behavioral settings, setup an alert email out of game that will allow you to give orders to your troops without logging in, and many more tactical options.

Best of all, you can do this with as many friends as you can make all in real time on one server.

The Bad
The game is not quite graphically on par with Far Cry 2, but it has made many advancements.

Some may not enjoy this game because of how complicated it is. It is still very fun to play, and full of action, but it is NOT an FPS.

The Bottom Line
It is the definition of an MMORTS:

Massive - thousands of planets divided up into solar systems which make up constellations of a galaxy.

Multiplayer - every player joins the same server/galaxy, and can ally, fight, and exercise diplomacy with any other empire. The option even exists for multiple players to control the same empire simultaneously.

Online - the game is up and running ~23 hours a day (daily maintenance), seven days a week, all year long. Not to mention, you can play to an extent from an email account or sms capable device.

Real Time (because apart the words don't mean much) - Whether it's building a tiny gun for a fighter, or building an enormous space station, or traveling in deep space to the other side of the galaxy, things take real time. You cannot pause the game or skip over parts.

Strategy - You are given so many options in this game, whether it's technology, tactically, espionage, trade, or diplomacy related, you create your own strategy as you go