Bret Devereaux

In short, the game actually simulates a fog of war.And it's kind of brilliant. In most games, the 'fog of war' is just a binary: you can see perfectly where your units are and not at all where they aren't. Highfleet forces you to deal with variable and uncertain information.

Just about the only thing it doesn't do is feed you actively wrong information (though you can do this, for instance, by detaching a fast ship to intentionally get spotted going one way and break contact - the AI will rush after the ghost you just created, while you slip past).

So you are constantly forced to make decisions (do I have time to repair here? refuel? where should I go next?) based on incomplete, fragmentary or dated information.

The limitations of the campaign also make you think in terms of task forces with specific purposes and fuel economy, rather than just bashing around in one big blob as in most 'strategy' games.

This is fascinating, please write more about this (or even do a educational let's play video?)

Well, I hit play and he was immediately discussing how the Lightning is an amazing ship, so +1 endorsed. I eventually designed a custom lightning for myself, but honestly, Lightning and Skylark are the two vanilla ships that I think are pretty close to perfect for their roles.