Don’t get me wrong, it still lurches along mid-game like Stellaris does, but the context really helped with understanding who the big bad guys were. Playing my most recent game as human, I decided to stick with the ‘no wars but defensive wars’ thing. It took nearly 150 years before the Klingons decided they wanted a piece of someone I was protecting… and then 3 more empires joined in. So that’s been fun.
Mostly though,the engine itself only makes for a mediocre Star Trek game. Exploration is largely largely concluded after 20 or 30 years and then it sort of devolves into the standard slog that any 4X game becomes.