The fly control and auto navigation function is terrible :(

It's a really tricky one for me. Warlords isn't terrible, it's also barely entertaining in my opinion.

The graphics are nice enough, the game runs well, but space itself here is just quite boring to look at.
The map is huge, but with barely anything to do. You can either take on freelance missions that are always the same (kill target, kill several targets, scan this, salvage that, deliver this), take on the INSANELY powerful bounties (seriously, the level 3 or 4 bounty gal just wrecked my entire mid-tier fleet in seconds, and there's like 15 more bounties above her), but the money isn't even worth the risk, to be honest. By the time you're able to take the higher ones on you don't need the money anyway, because you already have the highest tiers of ships.

You can, of course, also just be a miner and/or trader, but the interface never did it for me, just like with the predecessors. If you want me to be a mining mogul, there has to be more here. And while you can build up your own mining "operations" and expand your territory, ultimately, this, also, is very boring, as it all takes place on the overview map. The entire UI needs some love as well, menues, nestled within menues, some pause the game, some don't. It's a bit messy.

Thirdly, you can engage in piracy ... somewhat. Because to do that you'd actually have to find ships to pirate. My personal go-to is to get a seek and destroy contract, go there alone and just capture the ship. If they're similar to your level, you should be able to board them successfully, and earn a hefty sum, depending on the ship. I think you can basically also declare war on some parties, but I've never tried that.

The story is better left forgotten. You're being presented with a few text boxes, and have to travel from A to B most of the time, then destroy stuff. That's pretty much it. I'm sorry, but Freespace did that better like 30 years ago. And while you're fighting in a capital ship in this game, I'm sure you could've come up with something more engaging. I stopped playing 3/4 through, because now the game just wants me to invest MILLIONS of resources into research and development. Without cheating this just arbitrarily extends the game's story by dozens of hours ... or you just leave the game running in the background, letting your base accrue the necessary resources. Will only take a couple of days in real time, I guess. -.-
I wonder why WE, the players, as well as the protagonist, actually have to pay for all of that ♥♥♥♥♥. I also don't know why we control the resource generation when we're clearly not the leader of this faction. It's all a bit confusing, but gameplay before immersion, I guess.

In any case: Why did I stop and not soldier through? Because the game itself is rather boring. The combat does not evolve from commandeering a lowly corvette to a gigantic dreadnought. The ships do get bigger, yes, but that's about it. Combat stays the same. You have your abilities (yes, we need RPG abilities, of course, whether they make sense or not), and your equipment, like repair drones and shield strengtheners, etc. And you have your loadout, which consists of lasers, railguns, plasma weapons, and some missiles mostly. It's not exactly exciting stuff, and the presentation is rather lackluster.

You will spend most of the time in battle trying to find the correct camera and movement angle to keep yourself alive, while also being able to attack the enemies. Without a fleet of your own you're pretty much wrecked anyway in later fights. Assaulting a station or a big fleet on your own is tantamount to suicide. So, that means even more R&D and building of ships, which of course all cost resources, which equals more padding to the runtime for those who just wanted to "enjoy" the story (there's really nothing to enjoy here, sadly). My point is that despite flying massive capital ships and commanding entire fleets I never felt like flying massive capital ships and commanding entire fleets. It might be, because of the camera angle, I dunno, but your ships look tiny, even most stations look tiny. Once again, I remember Freespace and how huge everything was. Granted, again, you were in a fighter not a capital ship itself, but still. You also can't really instruct your fleet to do anything, nor do you see them 95% of the time. And when you do they're some yellow speck on a black canvas. Same for the enemies. Mostly they're just red rectangles. And after a while even the sound of 10 lasers firing simultaneously gets old. Compare these ships here to, say, the WH40k universe with huge macro cannons firing broadsides in close quarters combat. Lasers zipping away over 10,000s of miles. Torpedoes being launched from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. Momentum actually meaning something. Now imagine controlling that yourself. Maybe even being on the bridge and coordinating the assault of dozens of ships, enemy raiders and worse constantly invading your system. Or having to fend of a Tyranid Hive Fleet, a Chaos incursion, etc.

Edit: I've seen footage of commandeering a Titan class vessel, and that's the first ship where I think "damn, that's huge, and everyone else is tiny". That's the kind of escalation that could be fun. Alas, you have to suffer through endless hours of farming to get to that point (or play the tailor-made scenario, I think). It still doesn't change the gameplay though.

You could make a game out of sth like this, in another universe even, but not here. Warlords is for those people who want to have a relaxing sandbox experience, maybe listening to podcasts, watching shows, etc. and doing some space mining/pirating/killing every once in a while. It's not a game for people who want to enjoy epic space battles and experience an engaging story. And the DLC doesn't really make that any better, sadly enough. So much wasted potential. Again.