Great concept, but a few significant flaws keeps it from being a great game. As stated before, the difficulty scales very quickly, very early. This is mostly because of the level cap, which you hit almost as soon as you reach a new system. Caps are a huge pain, as they usually don't realistically portray the difficulty of each system. A lack of repeatable missions makes buying and leveling new ships almost impossible past a certain (early) point, as they start at level 1. Each mission is a juggling act between sending green ships to level them up, and sending veteran ships so you actually complete the mission. I'm starting to wonder if anyone has actually beaten this game, and how many times they had to restart to figure out the minmaxing necessary to do so.
Not a bad game, but far from the best action game. Very short, skill system look great at first glance but turns out to be extremely simplistic, and combat consists of 'hold down the mouse button'. Entertaining for an hour or two, but definitely doesn't deserve to be the #1 game on the site.