Infinite Lagrange

Honestly this game is quite large, considering the mobile heritage it comes from.
First off, yes, there are P2W mechanics in the game. You can spend truly silly amounts here if you are inclined. That said, many people play the game for free quite effectively, and the actual amount of money one should budget for the game, in my opinion, is reasonable: The Dawn Funding Scheme is a battle pass that lasts for about six weeks and gives you rewards for playing the game, and the Dawn Financial Plan is a weird currency investment option that takes a certain amount of in-game currency and triples it, over the course of several weeks. If I am correct, it was about $20 for the six weeks of gameplay for the basics.
Secondly, this is a strategy MMO. It's mildly similar to some games like Age of Empires (which I didn't play) and Game of Thrones: Conquest (which I did play, and is substantially worse than Infinite Lagrange.) You can consider it a little bit like a multiplayer Civ-like, where you have a base that you upgrade over the course of the season, with resources you mine using spaceships. There's both PvP and PvE, and you build fleets to deal with both. Unlike a lot of games in this genre, collective action is stressed much more, and the game expects you to find a good group to play with.
The game proceeds in seasons: while you're waiting for your next season to start, the game places you in a "hub" station in the Pioneer system. Spending too much time in the hub station is a bad idea, but generally you also can't/shouldn't jump into an actively running season. Instead, wait for a season to start that has the criteria you're looking for, and start the season at the beginning rather than in the middle. The in-game chat can be used to find a community to play with while you're waiting.
Seasons are one of the hardest things to explain to new players. Everyone who joins a server does so with a fresh base - you need to build up your ability to build ships, collect resources, perform side quests. This base expansion is one of the several focuses of play during the game. At the end of the season, each player is ranked according to several possible metrics - were you part of a faction that was militarily dominant? That's extra kudos. Did you have a side agreement to scan every rock in the system? If you did, that's extra benefits. And at the end, all your base progress gets reset for you to jump into a new system and do it again.
What does NOT reset are which ships you know how to build (expressed as Blueprints), and permanent upgrades allocated to those ships (expressed as Technical Points). So the second season, you will have more ships, and they will be more impressive than your first season. One of the big reasons to get the battlepass is a relatively stable stream of Tech Files, which are full of both technical points and new blueprints.
And in terms of the feeling of progression, Infinite Lagrange delivers. Each ship has half a dozen systems of interlocking components to advance. Even when you're not getting permanent tech points for your ship, if you're using the ships, they're getting temporary tech points for use during that season. As the season goes on, your ships will be getting stronger, and you'll be building bigger ships as your base gets more mature. Unfortunately, you won't always have access to the blueprints you want - the game uses a gacha-esque system where you open tech files boxes and you get what you get. There's a pity system that rewards you with "research points" and you can spend those to narrow down the options, but on some level, you are always at the whim of the game's RNG.
Having acquired a LOT of blueprints, I can tell you the game simulation is quite in-depth. Where you put upgrades matters, and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your ships matters. Building a good fleet can be hard, but the community as a whole tend to be relatively welcoming and willing to suggest improvements. I think of this very similarly to a tabletop war game like Warhammer 40k. A bit of the game is about thinking about the pieces and how they can best be used together.
There's a bunch of things there's no room to cover here - there's different kinds of game modes for a season to be in, from mining Trojite, to simply being about who can take the most cities, to data recovery. There's different personal objectives one can have, from collecting war victories, to prospecting for science, to even allying with pirates. There's a whole other game that's meant to run in tandem with the base game called Angulum. For a F2P game, it has a LOT going on.
And to be fair, it equally has a lot of weird buggy stuff - sometimes textures get screwed up and ships might not render as you expect, sometimes there's latency and ships will seem to glitch forward, sometimes the fact that the company that produces the game is based in China produces hilariously bad Engrish translations. But there are precious few games that are trying to do what Infinite Lagrange does, especially in the sci-fi genre. Many people will be turned off by the pace of the game or by the monetization. But if those are NOT turn-offs, then IL might be exactly the speed you want it to be.
And hey, it's free to find out.

I have really enjoyed the game. You start a new game every month to two months and have to rebuild your base up again although your ships that you unlock come with you. You can get to destroyer level in a few days and then the time frame for building ships is increased. I do enjoy living in the asteroid fields and doing the PVE aspects of the game. It is a slow strategy game where you put in commands and then have to wait to see how things progress. I typically have something going on in the background while I play this game. Overall I would recommend it to those who like to multi-task or have to.

this game is a cancer cell, sadly that cancer cell is addictive.

I guess you could say that I have played this game a lot. There is a lot of P2P features, generally coming out as buying the coins so you can then research the blueprints faster. Otherwise, it is all on chance. It is a lot of fun if you can get friends to join you, but you can find people online as well.

good game good graphics, luckily joined a great Squad and good community. but neeeds more fleet controls. like direct commands for ships. also pay to win ngl. but if u cant get past that then dont play the game

I play this game on both mobile and PC and even though the PC version is arguably worse, I still really enjoy this game on PC.

Gameplay: This is one of those love it or hate it kinda games. I absolutely love it. Competing with your Community against other squads and factions to control a star system? Now thats right up my alley. Its really cool to see your own progress and seeing your fleets getting stronger and stronger. But here comes the problem with most free2play games: Loot Boxes. Yep, if you want to be at the top of the leaderboard you will spend money to get better and better stuff. Do you have to spend money? Absolutely not. The best part about the game is the community and the way 100 people come together to defeat a faction or another player community. No need to spend because there will be enough wales in your squad for you to just sit back and help wherever its needed. Doesnt mean you can get big without spending, but since aquiring stuff is RNG based it does depend on luck.

Graphics: On mobile its really damn impressive and it also looks good on PC.

Audio: This game has a nice soundtrack, but also has some sound glitching going on while in combat.

Finally, why I think this game needs some love on PC: Mobile UI. This game was clearly made for mobile, which in of it self isnt bad, but other than ESC bringing up settings they didnt add any other hotkeys which is a shame. I really hope they add that at some point.

All in all, im really enjoying this game and i cant wait to see how this season ends!

I started playing this expecting it to be another mobile game style strategy game, and it is, but unlike most of those it's actually kind of well thought out in it's execution and it has some redeeming qualities to it.
It reminds me a lot of EVE online combined with some of the mechanics of those awful mobile strategy games like The Grand Mafia/Mafia City, you know the type where you have to wait like 3 days to upgrade a building in your base and you're just constantly being raided by people in your own alliance because you haven't spent 30 grand upgrading your shit? It's kinda like one of those except it's a good bit more accessible to a new player, and a lot more playable/enjoyable/balances/less scammy. It's basically EVE plus one of those if those were actually games and not literal scams that have to use false advertising to get people to play.
anyways
There is some element of pay to win there for sure, but unlike most of the terrible Mobile strategy games where you have to spend a LOT of money or you just sort of run into a wall where you cannot progress (unless you invest months or years of your time, of course), this game manages to find a sort of balance where you can be a totally free/light spender and you can still grow, participate meaningfully, and have some fun with it.
There seems to be a limit to how long things take to build (the longest build time I've encountered was 30 hours for the very last main base upgrade, so no 2 weeks to upgrade a random building kind of shit).
It's easy to obtain good ship blueprints and you can do it reliably for free. If you do choose to spend you don't have to spend hundreds to get enough to have a functional military, you'll get quite a lot of value by just buying the battlepass for 15 bucks, but even that is not needed to progress at a good rate of speed. As long as you don't burn thru the prox coins you get at the start from the opening quests and you invest them into the payment plans, you'll have a steady supply of tech boxes to pop, and within a few weeks you will likely have enough power at your disposal to be able to easily handle most PVE situations, and even many PVP ones.
You don't need to buy insurance. If you get attacked many of your ships will retreat upon "death" instead of being destroyed outright, and it's not so expensive to build a carrier or battlecruiser that you'll be tempted to break out the credit card to progress. I don't think you could buy ships/resources directly like that even if you wanted them, which does a lot to limit the power of whales. Of course, they can pop a lot more boxes than you, but you will find that even with better units you will still be able to win in fights against them as long as you are both at a similar level of base development.
The upgrade system has some depth to it, every ship is fairly unique in it's capabilities, which actually makes the prospect of obtaining new ships and trying different upgrade paths kind of exciting and fun. It's probably the thing that keeps me coming back to this game, I actually want to see all the ships and try all the things.
If you get into a decent alliance you don't have to worry about getting constantly beaten down as a new player. Even seemingly overpowered big spender types can be defeated with a free to play ship lineup IF you pay attention to what you're doing and ho everything interacts. There's actual strategy gaming here, even if it is a little boring and bland at times. It's a very good looking game too, considering that it's a game that can be run on mobile as well as PC.
So, I would recommend this game to fans of sci-fi and strategy games, but probably not to anyone else lol. Non strategy gamers would probably just view this as a game where you have a spreadsheet and you have to use your spreadsheet to fight everyone else's spreadsheet, very boring. But, strategy gamers like me have something wrong with us, so that aspect almost appeals to us....