It trades the more robust space combat of Elite for more exploration and management systems. Highly visionary game for coming out in 1986, allowing you explore hundreds of planets across almost as many star systems. Beyond the exploration, trading and crew management, there's also a story that unravels as your journey of discover progresses. In other words it's the best Star Trek game to have come out at this point. I will say the visuals are very basic even for 1986, but it's an understandable tradeoff for the scope of the game.