The background is unusual. Most of times, in space operas and other fictions, the "rebels" are the good guys. Rebellion and insurgency is seen as positive (by definition, it's against a dominant power, supposed coercitive enough), even though, in real life, such terms are used in the rhetorics of all sorts of factions. This game takes either an ironical stance towards this vocabulary, or a conservative perspective (like fictions -especially medieval ones- where an established order is threatened by evil regicides, and the hero gets to save a supposedly benevolent king), or a northern yankee position (opposing the southern revels of the US civil war, who are often depicted as the evil slavers), or just ensures to avoid any form of manicheism, by blurrying the familiar categories, or even puts you in the bad role (the game authors amnd their AI trying to kill you for the greater good). Even the dialogues are ambiguous, the rebels talking of a better world, but looking quite bloodthirsty, or hesitating to join you but being too obedient (anticommunist subtext in both cases ?).

Also, seeing Thymara's screenshot, I notice that the Red Tail has the same painjob as the flagship. I also wonder what M F K, on the flagship's logo, stands for.

All in all, this game gives me the impression of a whole background that is not elaborated upon, and kept as a hidden cohesive structure. Or, on the opposite, nice little touches that carefully prevent us to apply ready-made cliché structures on it. Or, on the opposite, tht still allow us to use any interpretative grid we'd like.

So, I wonder. How do you percieve the background context of this universe ? How do the sublte little touches in dialogues and designs shape your view of what happens in that game ?

I've wondered about the same things. I'm not sure if the devs just didn't want to put very much effort into the story or whether they deliberately left it ambiguous, perhaps to somehow serve the game's (IMO very good) atmosphere.

I see it as Star Trek's Federation meets Freespace 2's Neo Terran Front.

Flavor text tells of a multi-racial Federation that has kept the peace between the races for a significant amount of time, like Trek's Federation, and now that the FTL Federation has been smashed by the rebels, the various races are back at each others' throats. Further proof that the federation was good, or at least peace-loving, is the flavor text that to a Federation officer, mercenaries are even worse than the rebels.

Meanwhile the Rebellion is the Xenophobic NTF. You ever see a non-human onboard a rebel ship?

214 kickstarter backers got "PDF instruction manual with detailed back stories" so some background seems to exist, or will soon.

Not sure how trustable they are but Zoltans (I think) disagree. They did an evaluation of the situation, and concluded that the Federation is best for the galaxy. So they told me during a random encounter, but I don't remember the exact wording.

Well I do not know much of the story anyway. But if you compare it with the Empire from Star Wars, the Empire can bee seen as good, they enforce the law everywhere and try to keep everything under control, although with more harsh consequences. It is not all bad.

Rebels seem to be more unorganized and without any sort of law enforcement.

Hmm...
At least all known races could be convince to join this war at federation side. For example Rocks give their ship to fight against Rebels, cause they found us strong enough. What may be wrong at multiracial community?

It is implied throughout the game that the better world the Rebels speak about is one without aliens.

There are also many events caused by rebels attacking civilian communities and stores.

If the Federation is evil, then they are definitely the lesser of two.

here, one rebel comment from the "zoltan peace quest"

Ya, I saw that too. It is one of the things I loved about my old games, the history behind it all. Hopefully they make it available to DL at some point.