This is an awesome game...

it's for free download on steam...

nothing else is like it!!!
basically its a first person shooter multiplayer deathmatch type and spaceship combat simulator thats using the half life 2 engine.

your missions is to destroy the enemy fleet before they destroy your's and then board the enemy flag ship and try to disable their shield generator, weapons system from the inside out so your flag ship can destory their before they destory your's

here are some information:

Battle Strategy
You will be engaging enemy capital ships in each battle. You are expected to follow the Captain's orders and destroy or capture enemy capital ships with minimal damage to your own. You will be travelling with a small fleet of corvettes. Corvettes are small support ships which protect your capital ship from tactical threats. These corvettes are expendable, but warping in new ones takes time.

The first step of any battle will be to Strike the enemy fleet. Before your team can attempt a boarding, all enemy corvettes in the area must be destroyed. With the corvettes up, it is impossible to mount a successful boarding effort. You cannot afford to lose marines to poorly supported forward troops.

Once the corvettes are down, the Captain will order an Attack. Enemy reinforcements will be on their way, so it's important to land quickly. Your team will deploy gunships and attempt to secure the enemy hangar. With the hangar secured, you must capture any remaining part of the ship to disable the capital ship and allow our weapons to tear into the hull. Once you have control of one of the subsystems, your team can scramble communications and slow down enemy reinforcements, freezing the timer long enough to deal significant damage.

If your team cannot destroy the capital ship during your attack phase, enemy reinforcements will arrive and the game will return to the strike phase. Expect a an enemy counter-attack, forcing the Captain to issue a Defend order.

The current phase of battle is displayed at the top of the screen along with a reinforcements timer. It is crucial to play the appropriate roles during the Strike, Defend and Attack phases to help your team achieve victory.

this information was taken from their official site:
http://www.eternal-silence.net/manual.php

and now here are some screenshots:





the only one down side to this game...

not that many people play it unfortunatly...
but i hope to see you all in it
it has become one of my favorate games in just a few games  

i highly recommend it

i wish that we might be able to play this game with / against each other sometime

oh... and as for the lack of people problem... i find that it contains the most people around 1 to 5 in the afternoon... and if there is no one in the servers... simply join one that you like (even if it is empty) and before you know it... people come swarming in for some really odd reason

I might try it at the library or something...does it require a complex installation, or might it be run from, say a flash drive?

*Darl181 lost the game

um... it's very graphics intensive... normal computers with out a good graphics card wont even be able to start it.
plus the installation is is very complex unfortunatly...
you will need a steam account that already has half life 2 installed... or portal... (you need to buy those if you dont have it already)

so i would say that it is 99.999999% impossible for you to play that at a library

Hmm btw I tried it earlier and it kept disconnecting me from servers after 5 seconds. It said something about not being able to get Steam ID

Yes I got a Steam account and also unblocked the game on Windows firewall. Maybe my ISP is blacklisted?

That said, the game ran at like 50-60 fps with everything maxed out (even anti-aliasing)

Yeah that's what I thought. I was happy I could use Portal since this is what I got

Aw sorry to hear

Portal might be cheap, as I got it for $10 at staples and that's in Canadian dollars with import fees and all.