I picked it up cheap myself recently at Best Buy.
I played it a couple of times and I gave up during the first Next Generation era game. Trying to save the star system with the asteroids is just too annoying. I tried it for an entire day and didn't beat it.
I got stuck on the Stargazer mission for months and couldn't figure out wtf I was doing wrong or how to beat that level.
Then I learned..... well for starters, there's cheats you can enter that's like God mode so your ships don't blow up, and you can also edit the config to give you a crap load of money to buy any available ships you want.....
.... but for that particular mission, you need to get your ships to target only the asteroids with red boxes around them.... those are the only ones that will hit the planets and end the mission.
After you destroy a bunch of those, the mission will move onto you needing to take the automated gun thingys (it's been a while) and tractor them to their designated co-ordinates by each planet which will eventually help defend the planets.
Once all of those are in place the mission will move onto a big giant asteroid appearing and you needing to destroy it.
They tell you to tractor beam smaller asteroids and hit the bigger one with them which will eventually destroy it and end the mission..... but for the longest time, I was doing it all wrong.
I was towing them and when I got near, I dropped the tractor beam to let them glide into the asteroid, but it never worked.....
.... what you need to do (which is kinda dumb) is fly your ship (with asteroids in tow) directly into the bigger asteroid as in a collision course.... your ship will not be damaged or destroyed but once you fly into it, it will register an impact with the asteroid you were towing..... then go for another and repeat.
Eventually you will destroy the bigger asteroid and win the mission.
it's one of the more annoying and most cumbersome missions in the entire game, but once you beat it, it goes back to the same kind of missions as before. Even many of the online FAQ's specifically note that this mission is the worst pain in the ass there is in the game, but once you beat it, things go back to normal.
I own the PC version as well and it's far easier to control using a controller as your primary method of control with the combination of the mouse and the keyboard to help you control your view and additional commands not on the controller...... now if you can octopus your way through all three controls (Controller/Mouse/Keyboard) you'll do just fine.
And God mode helps a lot on the single player.
I liked the game.... beat it, played the expansion "Ultimate Universe" and didn't mind it..... it certainly isn't perfect and if you never seek out any online FAQ's chances are you'll never figure the damn thing out..... but once you do figure it out, it's actually quite fun.
