If you've played the various other 5- and 6-player Settlers games, you probably noticed that none of them work particularly well. Adding the 5th and 6th player just tends to slow down the game (a lot) and makes it longer, without adding much value. Fortunately, Kosmos and Herr Teuber have done a much more thorough job with the 5-6 player version of Starfarers: the production has been ramped up a bit to accelerate the game a bit, the new alien race has a bunch of solid new special powers (and additionally increase the number of VPs available, which helps), and there have been a few other rules tweaks. The mapboard alterations have been nicely done, with little overlays with a nice tacky substance on the back which doesn't seem to degrade much.It still works slightly less well than 4-player Starfarers (I rated Starfarers as a 4-star game when it first came out; that was a mistake, it's 5 stars). The game is a bit slower and takes longer, perhaps a bit too long. But, it's still a very good game and it handles the extra players much more gracefully than Settlers does. Being able to play this great game with 5 or 6 is certainly worth it.