I played this game back in the day, and it was an interesting addition to the 4X genre of space strategy games. Ambitious in its intent, it was developed by a studio (Interactive magic) that was going bankrupt around the development of it, and the entire company went under shortly after it was released--and that was too early, as some features were not quite right at release. Still, I remember it fondly, which is why I went digging and found this thread.
The appeal to the game is it includes the usual 4X features: resource management, tech trees, ship upgrades, and the usual explore, expand, exploit & exterminate gameplay; plus it is all played on a map of asteroids rotating around the sun at varying speeds, so the map itself, and positions of friendly and enemy strongholds, is constantly changing; in addition, the several factions are well-balanced, but each has a unique approach to technology and development, so one faction might prefer large, heavy asteroids due to their gravitic-based tech, while another wants those near the sun for solar/thermal tech, and yet another wants the asteroids that spin the fastest because of their inertial momentum tech. The mix of unexpected technologies, varying value of the same piece of real estate, and the fact that that real estate is constantly moving with respect to all other real estate makes a fascinating challenge that has not been matched ever since.
If GOG ever does get access to it, I'd be in line to buy it, but they should definitely get ahold of the unofficial patch for the game: after the company went bankrupt one of the developers, on his own time, wrote a patch to fix all the bugs and omissions in the released version. The GOG version would therefore need the rights to the game, the unofficial patch, and whatever other magic needs to be conjured to get a game of this vintage to run on a modern operating system. I won't hold my breath, but I do still hope that some day I might be pleasantly surprised.
