I'm on mission 3 so far (plan to play a lot more this weekend) and so far it definitely captures the Homeworld feel of gameplay, In both the way units "feel/are presented" and with large mission areas, crisp controls, a compelling story arc, and challenging (but not frustratingly so) missions with a a welcome amount of variety so far. If you're a fan of the Homeworld series I'm pretty sure you'll feel right at home in Ancient Space.
I chukled at the "large mission areas" part. While there can be many "sectors" to build and fight in, the individual sectors are rather small consisting only of 2 to 6 building areas. And jumping back and forth between these sectors can prove to be a nuisance at times.
Sadly it has nothing in common with Homewrold in gameplay terms. I felt its more close to Starcraft than any space game i played. The 3D is only there for show, you can very much play the game without using the g and control keys and get away with it.
The story is ok, the controls are basic 2D RTS controls with some abilities to spam, pause system is a nice addon(and because of the late game mad sector hopping its essential) and i like the system overview, while not insanely useful its at least pretty.
Challenging it is, with insane number of endlessly respawning enemies, and limited number of ships and resources at your command. Also if you do something the mission designers didnt think you would do(like not scanning the Scythe relay, or destroying all structures before the convoy), you can see how rigidly scripted the missions are. Mission variety is nice, they at least tried, but most missions still boil down to blob your carrier group and destroy everything in your path.
If you are fan of the Homeworld series, well you remain that way till you get old and sour. Or you can get Starcraft in (Ancient) Space for cheap and have some brainless flawed RTS fun.
