The basic storyline is simplistic, you are the newest employee at TetraCorp, charged with mining from asteroid belts in the fragmented sectors. Sounds easy enough, that is until you add the alien element to it: seven other species share the same agenda, some of them friendly and some of them unfriendly, and then you have "The Mauna", the real scourge of the sector. The diplomatic aspect of the game is in my opinion an equal to Master Of Orion II with a multitude of options to choose from. One of my favourites is trading pointless goods with the Merchants that appear from time to time and selling them to certain species for great profit.

Fragile Allegiance also focuses more intensely on the biological warfare side of things, your agents can be sent to an opponent's asteroid toting various toxins, each one of which requires a specific antidote (if available)... which you can always sell to them afterwards ;) Combat is handled well, with your ships being fully customisable. Combat can also be very strategical: as an example if you were to gather a large fleet and move it towards the border between you and an alien culture, the AI will pick up on this and react accordingly. As well as ships, each asteroid has the ability to build missiles which can be aimed at your opponent, and the careful placement of missile bay asteroids can be very helpful.

Fragile Allegiance is almost everything you can ask for in a space strategy game with the only failing being the inability to perform interesting research, but this is compensated for by the ability to purchase new blueprints from TetraCorp headquarters. A must-have!