I'm just curious, for those who play SPAZ, how do you prefer to play?

For myself , I tend to hit up Beam research, as soon as I realized how effective leach beams were I tended to mount as many forward beams as possible (even using static turret mounts to get bigger beams) added a beam booster. I then boost shields and armor to try and just tool up the most ridiculous ship possible. I outfit my convoy with stuff that helps me "tackle" opposing shits (gravity missles, leach beams, etc.) so I can outmaneuver them. Obviously reactors and engines get some love.

I try to boost crew after I hit part 3 of the story (where your crew has to fight off a lot of zombies or your start losing ships too often). Also at this stage is the time to boost cannons up to around 8 because you'll have a big enough ship for a monster cannon as well as plenty of beams (and cannons are critical late game).

There's something satisfying about using the enemy ship's reactor to blow them to bits...

Things I don't tend to use: Bombs or Mines. I also do level up turrets a bit early on but I never really use the deployable ones. I also have not found stealth to be all that fun.

I'm still a newbie. I'm focusing on defensive features - heavier reactors, shielding, and armor - and missiles, keeping beam weapons around for energy based weapon mounts. I'd like to try drones but can't find the tech anywhere.

You can't get really cool drones until late in the game and the stealth bombers require tech 10!!!! Making them one of the hardest to mount items in the game.

Drones are good but there's some stealth seeking, multi warhead missiles later on that can take out half your drones in one or two shots from a large or huge mount. I actually tech up to these missiles as soon as I get them as they really are that good (gravity missiles are my other choice since I don't need damage as much as I need the slow effect from them).

Defensive features are something you should normally balance with offense on normal difficulties (I still need to try the hardest difficulty myself) as they won't stand up to an extended pounding if you can't even punch through the opponents shields for 30 seconds.

beams fo sure!

cannons are just to scatter shot for the momentum based flight and I suck at aiming even without my ship skating around, in that regard missiles are nice too.

haven't really gotten too far in the game though, bombs are nice for nuking space stations and the mines are probably good for the zombie bits.

For those of us whom have not played, should we be playing? It looks fairly interesting.

The demo will be enough to give you an idea of how it plays. It's a good game, but again, try the demo.

too late for the demo. Just grabbed it while shopping on Amazon for stuff. Said it was DRM free whatever that ends up meaning through Amazon. It looks a lot like an online activation required thing so far.

CD key and play.

no call-in or install limits.

I play without a distince play syle. it involves alot of mining and aquireing new tech tough.

that's what I like to hear.

Not true. The game requires online activation at install time, but you're right about there not being a limited number of activations.

I know this because I was just talking to one of the devs via email. They're considering removing the DRM in a future update though, which is quite nice. I'll wait and see if they do that.
See above.

There's a strong argument that SPAZ was the best game released last year, only Sequence and Bastion really compete for that honor, no AAA games do. Yes, you should be playing it. Steam even has it on sale this weekend.

I played for about 5 hours last night, wiped out my rez bank TWICE taking down some nasty space stations, unlocked 4 new ships, visited three new worlds, and then promptly loaded an old file instead of saving.

oh well, the new ships weren't all that great and I kinda need to get my mother ship upgraded / find some fourth tier attack ships before I start trying to piss off everyone at once.

If you need to blow through space stations early game, try the outer rims and stick to stations that have a lower power (or do a single mission that lowers Civ or UTA strength in that system), there's a big difference between systems, even at strength 3 that, which tech levels of 10 and systems with tech levels of 30 (or more). You can often get the same item from multiple systems.

Also, you can get infinite research, rez, and goons later on, if you want, but it takes time and there's a bit of tedium involved (not so much that you won't max out everything you really want, but enough that you'll probably not move every tech to 10).

well I found a nice civ station next to a mining asteroid that I could just hang out at and leech off what the station didn't gobble up. I used that to refill my rez the first time, then I attacked said station and got my ass handed to me and had to refil the old fashioned way of warping into battles between the CIV and UTA to roll both sides.