Irrational Pride: Neptune's Pride Beta

I haven't played this yet - though I've just signed up - but this beta interests me in a couple of ways. Firstly, it's by a new developer founded by ex-Irrationalite (i.e. Freedom Force, Swat, Bioshock, etc) Jay Kyburz with fellow Irrationalites. It seems I like writing "Irrationalites". Secondly, it may be the closest thing I've seen to what I wished for at the end of my Travian piece back in the day - diplomacy-heavy, low-maintenance, smaller-player-numbers strategy game you can slide into your day. Neptune's Pride is a online-only space-empire game. It's been in development for 4 months, but is already is functional and in open Beta. There's a video below which shows the basics, but you'd be better going to look around the site.

So yeah. Very much my kind of thing and could be very interesting. It strikes me if I was doing the Unknown Pleasures again this year, this may have been on it. More news on when my game fills up and I actually start.