I don't think this will exactly hit a tune with the SC fans.
Building something yourself (which seems to be one of the foci points of this game), with the a nessecary drop in graphics quality is off putting to some people. They'd rather buy a beautiful 3D model for 50 buckeroos than getting the chance to design something less visually pleasing themselves, as they'd see that as actual work.
But then again, i'm of the X-Series crowd and might not understand what SC fans really want, as it basically became very uninteresting to me the moment i read that article about their proposed economic simulation, which failed to mention resource sources/sinks, but went into some virtual resource futures market driven by a preset algorithm instead.
