My copy of
Stellar Horizons arrived yesterday. I set it up to try to learn the rules in prep for a scheduled 3-player game this weekend. This thing eats up a lot of table space! Looks like it could be interesting. I've played a number of Compass Games before but never owned one. I'm finding the way they've organized the rule-book to be less than optimal. The general rules seem to be pretty straightforward but there are quite a number of little modifiers and exceptions for just about every rule and they are spread out all over the place with many just being mentioned almost in passing in the middle of a paragraph. The lack of an index doesn't help.
Campaign game starting layout.
Policy tree. You can change your nation's policy once per decade (game turns=1 year)
Tech tree. The North Americans have quite a head-start with the Russians close behind. The Chinese have a few starting techs and everyone else starts at zero.
North America play board.
Russia play board
Japan play board
Close up of one of the planetary systems. (Mars). The Russians start with an unmanned research vessel in orbit and the North Americans have a manned mission one year out.