It's a good game, I believe it would benefit greatly from the creator working with it to expand functionality and game play like with Cortex Command (I guess time will tell if he does, by the article it sounds like his attention is already going to his next project), however modders appear to have begun adding content.
I believe balancing is an issue in the game, fighters are wholly useless in a Star Trek sense of uselessness. Their appearance seems redundant as IIRC several missions (I'm certain at least one does) remove them from playability indicating that they should be a 'tide turner' in certain missions, however they're decimated in milliseconds.
Since virtually all 'space' battles are based off of naval battles, it seems somewhat absurd that fighters are inherently useless in the game, when in reality they're the most decisive force in naval battles.
Based on his blog (which I subscribe to) he is still working on GSB quite a bit. Every few posts he talks about a tricky bug or the next patch or the new big features going into the Expansion Pack. http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/
Well that's good to know, I picked this up a few months ago and didn't hear much about it again and since the start of the christmas season I've barely had time to touch any games. It's good to know there's now an expansion out there.
I bought this quite early. It is a truly beautiful game, with perhaps less fun gameplay than I would have liked, but I don't regret my purchase.
Here's a weird note about games as opposed to other software: games wear on the user quickly. For example, I pre-ordered it while it was still in the open beta (for pre-orderers), and not quite balanced or "finished" yet (to the extent that any software is every finished). I played it before those issues were quite hammered out, and had "consumed" the game prior to it being officially released.
This might have relevance to people who are hoping to use the "release early and iterate like mad" strategy for a videogame. (Then again, considering he got my money at the full sale price, I guess he can't be too poorly off for it.)
He's done a great job of marketing this. I haven't picked it up yet (purchasing addictive games mid-semester is a bad idea), but I keep being reminded about it every few weeks anyway.
http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/
(scroll down)
I just wish there was a Mac version :( I'd buy it.