Earth has been destroyed by the Roaches and their Hive Queen. As the commanding Admiral of the Earth Expeditionary Force's last surviving unit, Strikefleet Omega, it's your duty to hunt down the Queen and take the fight to her before the rest of mankind's colonies meet their end too.
Gameplay starts out with you having only one command carrier that can launch fighters and deploy mining ships to gather the crystals you need to call in reinforcements. Up to six additional spacecraft can be onscreen at any one time, in any mix of the following:
- Starfighter carriers deploy additional fighters. Fighters are ineffective against bombers and capital ships.
- Mining ops carriers deploy additional mining ships.
- Interceptor carriers deploy interceptors effective against bombers but ineffective against fighters.
- Bomber carriers deploy bombers effective against enemy capital ships and construction ships.
- Gunships deliver Herd Hitting Attacks effective against bombers and saucers but ineffective against Deflector Shields.
This game contains examples of the following:
- A Taste of Power: In the first stage, you get access to the artillery gunships with their Herd-Hitting Attack. You won't get to use them again for a while.
- The Battlestar: Downplayed with the command carrier, which doesn't have normal anti-ship weapons per se but does have a "Death Blossom" Smart Bomb. Averted with the other starfighter carriers, which have no ship-to-ship weapons and can only launch fighters.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: The game is free, and you can play all the way to the end without paying a dollar. However, the "Megacreds" you can buy with real cash (or otherwise have to tediously gain by completing "offers" or defeating Elite Mooks) can be used to fire Smart Bombs, unlock even better ships or upgrade normal ships to the highest level.
- Bug War: This is the setting, right down to a Keystone Army led by a Hive Queen.
- Call-Forward: One of the systems is named Aljernon, which would be the name of a character in the then-unreleased Shadowrun Returns.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: It's not long into the game before the Roaches deploy bombers that your fighters' weapons are ineffective against. Because you don't have any better options yet at that point, all you can do is keep throwing fighters at them.
- Glass Cannon: Gunships can tear apart whole swarms of fighters and greatly damage bombers and saucers, but are very thin-skinned.
- Lightning Bruiser: All the special ships unlocked by Megacreds are superior to the normal ones that only cost Alloy; for example, the Dragon-class starfighter carrier's fighters are faster, stronger and tougher than the normal fighters used by the command carrier and the Lancer-class. In contrast, the Yamamoto-class's fighters are stronger but slower.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: The Roaches favour this colour scheme, while your side uses greens and blues and oranges.
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Self-Imposed Challenge: There are Achievements for completing 3 missions in a row without using artillery, Omega-13 or Death Blossom, as well as winning a system on fast forward. - Shout-Out:
- The admiral in command of the whole EEF is Alexandre (sic) Kerensky. There's also a system called Davion.
- System names are full of this. There're Dunkelzahn, Tyrion, Baratheon, Braavos, Baltar, T'Challa, Ripley, Plissken, Elessar...
- There's a superweapon called Omega-13.
- Achievements include Master and Commander, Tactical Genius, Die Hard, Die Harder and With a Vengeance.
- A Professor Yamato developed a spacecraft mounting a Wave-Motion Gun.
- Space Fighter: Your primary "weapon" for much of the game and also the main type of enemy unit. Comes in Jack of All Stats, Mighty Glacier and Lightning Bruiser forms.
