I loved the game!  I don't think that can count the number of FULL games that I played.  The gameplay was great, but one of the things that I really enjoyed was the ability to name your ships and fleets.  I would literally have hundreds of ships and each one of them had a name (Executioner, Blade, Freedom, Devestator, etc...)

The strategy was also very good, you had to really plan because if you sent a fleet to the opposite side of the galaxy, you would be without those ships for many days.

Each individual charachter or hero really added to the game.  You really felt like YOU were the one they were reporting to after each update.

The grand scale of fleet building was very cool too!  I mean you literally had 100's if not 1000's of fighters per fleet and the fleets could be huge in the battles! (unlike a certain game I know *cough*EaW*cough*

The thing that I probably liked most about it was the lore associated with it.  It had TONS of planets and you knew the stories to some of them (more if you read the post RotJ books) and the interface really made you feel as if you were a part of the SW universe.

Thanks very much for reminding me of this game!  Now I think that I need to dig through my old disks and install it yet again!

Rebellion is an awesome game and a hidden gem among Star Wars games.  I bought it on ebay a couple years ago and it holds a special place in my closet.

The game has a pretty high learning curve, but once you get past that, it's a total blast.  I actually liked this game much more than Masters of Orion because it had a mysterious feeling of not knowing when you would get attacked or when a spy or assassin would show up.  You had to play this with another real person though to get the full experience.  Make sure to turn off the droid alerts as well, as they got incredibly annoying after a while.

Unfortunately, it didn't get very good coverage and quickly drifted off the radar.  I really wish someone else would take this same engine idea and create an original game with an original IP.