I ended up buying it last night and playing with Scourge, Thomas, and Kalh. Holy hell that game is fun. The ability to design your own ship, trial and error thrusters and engines, as well as crew and making sure you're operating at 100% efficiency is a blast. Obviously a lot of work still, but the potential is huge. Plus when you build a ship it saves the schematics? You could then create a shipline, start a faction, and let your members use those designs for their ships.
Apparently the next update will allow player controlled sectors/systems.