Can concur though I played both Solar Winds and SC2 back in the day. Even at the time Solar Winds felt like a cheaper cash-in on the space RPG genre. The ship drove like a car, the ship modifications were pretty limited. Though it had a great power management system which could have formed the basis for some pretty inventive gameplay if it was properly leveraged.

I've come back to Solar Winds maybe once in the past 20 years, and replayed SC2 about 4 or 5 times since UQM was released.

Was looking forward to the next instalment but the quagmire of legal issues, divided fanbase, etc, has really left a sour impression on the future of the franchise for me, which is sad given the world TFB created initially.