A new expansion is coming out October 10 and that should have planetary surrender. There is an updated demo if you have not already tried it. There are also some video walkthroughs here
It does indeed focus mainly on military conquest although expansions are bringing in more stuff. In that sense the game is close to VGA Planets and Stars! gameplay, although turns do not take as much work and it generally has more turns compared to the older games that were PBEM.
In VGA Planets 3 you had 4 different techs: Hull, Beam weapons, Torpedo weapons and Engines and they were from 1 to 10. You already knew the techs but had to spend money increasing it to what level you wanted on each starbase. So it was more a question of money and what you wanted to use the starbase for.
The advantage of that approach was that you could, depending on money and planets found, start building good quality warships by perhaps turn 15. That is IMO essential in a PBEM whereas Stars! used regular research which meant it was actually good to not get involved in wars in the beginning unless you could get an easy win (and that only happens against new players)
CBR
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