I remember the first time I played this game it was fantastic and strategic. Now coming back to it years later to find they removed the Wave Preview bar makes it an absolutely terrible game. Later levels especially it is literally impossible to plan ahead for monsters that are flying or absorption because you CANT TELL when they are coming until the wave before. This turns it from a great, strategic game of planning out how you are going to build and upgrade throughout the level to just a stupid 'build and see what comes, then go back and try again'. Such a shame.
@Elkian - you need to leave/re-enter the bar a couple times. Next time the guy orders a drink after you change the sign the bartender will glance at it and take all of his money.
So, absolutely HUGE exploit in the game for any mission that requires you to defend a pylon. The mission ends when your fleet is destroyed - and stars are based on pylons surviving. So you can instantly 3 star any pylon mission with a fleet consisting of '1' common ship by immediately deploying it next to an enemy. It dies, mission ends, instant 3 star.
Multiplayer is unbalanced pay 2 win trash. Everybody only uses 2 strategies - rush for freeze or rush for capital ship. In both cases whoever paid the most for premium ships wins.
It's not a bad game, its just way, way, WAY too luck based. As everybody mentions, Madagascar is simply too hard to infect - and even when I started there I watched it carefully. It was 47 days before a SINGLE ship left the island (next time I started there it took 27 days for the first ship to leave). The achievement honestly might as well read: "Randomize a number between 1 and 100. If it is 100 you get the achievement. If it isn't, wait 5 minutes and roll again."
 "Protector")
 "Reincarnation: The Final Happy Hour")
 "Redshift")
 "Obliterate Everything 3"){kind=icon}
 "Pandemic 2")