This departure from pure space steel adds a lot of character to the game. The space ship graphics are also very well presented, the appearance being excellent at resolutions from 800x600 up to full 32-bit colour 1280x960 mode. The screenshots I took for this preview are a mixture of 800x600 and 1024x768. The level of detail in the ship models is high, for example the colony ship has four mini-spheres in its hull which slowly rotate and it has six independent thrusters at its rear. The prefab space station has a giant robotic arm which deploys its tubular structure.
Space tugs have elastic, luminescent purple tow lines.
Each mission in the game is set in a single star system around which the planets rotate. This makes for a dynamic combat environment because the space stations you build as the focus of your operations move in orbit with time. The systems include asteroid belts, mini-nebulae and the planets themselves. The planets are animated, for example with swirling clouds of green gas, or glowing red rings. While you can move in full 3D, the star systems lie in a 2D plane, so the focus of the action also lies in a single plane, in contrast to Homeworld .