Needs seeeeeerious work. I've given it several chances because I can see it has great potential, but there seems to be an underlying assumption that everyone is going to use the cheat codes. Just too much stuff thrown at you at once to get past about level 6 honestly, at least on my system. I saw that someone else said that the spawn and fire rates are based on time and frames respectively; perhaps this was written without being tested on computers with different levels of ability? I run at high quality all the time, due to my system being high-end enough to see no performance changes for anything but the most excessive games.
The difficulty ramp needs to be reworked, its easy-easy-easy-wtf right now. Smooth it out and let people upgrade a little more before throwing that carrier/2 destroyer combo at them. Three runthroughs so far and they shredded me each time. Secondly, the strategy guide seems to assume people will use the cheats. "Upgrade your main gun and your turrets and your fighter bay and your repair bay all at once and then go back and do it again."