The single player campaign was pretty good (for its time), but multiplayer/skirmish kinda sucked. Like what was said. It is a rush to get destroyers, and carriers. The patches didn't change that, and the game still has issues AFAIK. I haven't played it in a long time. This game was in development before Homeworld, but got delayed, and wasn't released until way after HW's release. I would have killed to have ORBS maps, and backgrounds in a HW game. The main player races ships looked dated even compared to HW1 standards. I did however like the NPC Alien ship designs.
The fact that you cant mod the game at all (other than minor texture changes) didn't help its cause much. This game should have been added to the "games who's release should have been pushed back" list.